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Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

(www.newscientist.com)
189 points docmechanic | 1 comments | 07 Apr 25 15:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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mattdeboard ◴[11 Apr 25 17:26 UTC] 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. mppm ◴[12 Apr 25 10:17 UTC] No.43663068[source]▶
As others have pointed out, writing is a very recent phenomenon, but your intuition seems correct in general - what sets humans apart from chimps and bonobos is efficient transfer learning to future generations. If you are interested, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition by Michael Tomasello makes this point in detail. Tomasello argues that chimps, while being impressive learners and problem solvers in some ways, actually have extremely inefficient cultural transfer, which prevents runaway cultural evolution that has happened in humans.