HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 259A major obstacle to such a revision is understanding how culture dis-
tinguishes us from apes (assumed to be the nearest biological model) and
thus what kind of system we really have as humans. Th e Rubicon hang-
up has put many in a state of denial on that subject. Yet many bridges
have been crossed in the course of evolution, with major leaps in variation-
creation and adaptability. Th e crossing from unicellular to multicellular
forms was one. Th e evolution of brains and cognitive systems was another.
And humans are starkly diff er ent from apes in many other ways.
Th ese include huge brains, bipedalism, manual dexterity, tool making,
and more complex cognitive systems, for a start. Humans also have com-
plex technologies, cooperative systems of production, and a system of
communication radically diff er ent from any other in the animal world.
Most striking is that all other species— including apes— are specialized
for a par tic u lar environmental niche. Not so humans. We have no par-
tic u lar niche, colonizing every corner of the world: we adapt the world to
ourselves rather than vice versa. All this has created confusion about how
evolution— and what kind of conditions— could have produced such an
animal.
Most investigators acknowledge that our capacity for culture is the ma-
jor factor under lying human accomplishments. But then to keep it teth-
ered to a Darwinian mast, a special defi nition is imposed on it. Culture is
reduced to “social learning,” an ability to acquire knowledge and skills
from other individuals. So culture “can then be modeled as a Darwinian
pro cess comprising the selective retention of favourable culturally trans-
mitted variants.”^1
In that defi nition, culture comprises discrete packets of information,
like genes, that can be naturally selected. In Th e Selfi sh Gene, Richard
Dawkins called these packets “memes” (from the Greek for what can be
imitated). Although originally referring to things like tools, clothing, and
skills, the idea has been generalized to include ideas, beliefs, and so on,
as well as specifi c be hav iors. So— with some relief, it seems— culture can
be brought into the neo- Darwinian framework aft er all.
In this picture of culture, of course, human cooperation also has to be
specially defi ned. As with the Machiavellian hypothesis mentioned in
chapter 8, cooperation is defi ned as a cognitively clever means by which
individuals can reap the benefi ts of social life while minimizing the
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