ABSTRACT
Human beings are unusual animals. When we learn – whether acquiring new skills or making sense of the world – our experiences are colored by the words and actions of others. For much of our history, what we have been able to learn has been delimited by the qualities of the place we inhabit and by the experiences of our kith and kin. Archaeologists, evolutionary psychologists, and experts in the development and capacities of language are vigorously debating the origins of the modern human mind. They are trying to assess the relations between speech, symbolic activities, the making and use of tools, planning complex actions and the reproduction of cultural practices. On current evidence, it is reasonable to say that humans have been learning from and instructing each other for at least 70,000 years (Brown et al. 2012, Botha 2010, Henshilwood and Dubreil 2009, Wynn and Coolidge 2010, Pradhan et al. 2012, Schuppli et al. 2012, Gibson and Ingold 1995, Sterelny 2012). Indeed, recent scholarship suggests that linguistically mediated collaboration, learning and instruction may predate the emergence of modern humans 500,000 years ago (Dediu and Levinson, 2013).
