ABSTRACT
Pedagogy, the teaching of one individual by another, appears to be a biological novelty, an activity largely confined to humans. Is the proposition sound? Biological generalizations are notoriously subject to exception. If the claim is true, how shall we account for it? What are the psychological mechanisms on which pedagogy depends? Are there implications here for the evolution of human intelligence? According to the standard argument, cultural evolution fueled biological evolution: Early changes in protohuman brain led to more complex forms of social organization. The advancement of human social complexity is then ascribed to language. Though not false, this traditional account is incomplete; human uniqueness does not consist solely of language. For instance, if one added language to an ape, one would not produce a human. Thus one may accept the standard argument: Cultural evolution fueled biological evolution, while at the same time rejecting the standard story of the origin of culture.
