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189 points docmechanic | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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mattdeboard ◴[] No.43656266[source]
Reinforcing my strongly held belief that what fundamentally sets humans apart isn't spoken language, or tools, or any of that, but rather the fact we write down what we know, then make those writings available to future generations to build on. We're a species distinguished from all others by our information-archival and -dissemination practices. We're an archivist species, a librarian species. Homo archivum. In my opinion.
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1. NoTeslaThrow ◴[] No.43658078[source]
This seems sort of a secondary cause of our unique linguistic abilities. Afaik no other animal can use recursive grammars. Certainly not to the same extent.

Anyway this also excludes all the humans that never wrote anything, which is most of them. If anything our verbal history is our strongest and most ancient culture.