ABSTRACT
What exactly is it that makes us human rather than, say, just another somewhat sizeable ape generally bigger than a chimpanzee but smaller than a gorilla? At least five things mark us off as a biological species. Importantly, it is the combination of these characteristics, not any one of them alone, that sets us apart and has enabled us to evolve to be the creatures we are today. This is why we like to call them “The Great Human High-Five Advantage”: (1) social nurturance; (2) social learning; (3) social networks; (4) fantasy and imagination; and (5) social collaboration. As the anthropologist Agustín Fuentes at Princeton University has emphasized, “the initial condition of any creative act is collaboration.” Rather than seeing them as two sides of the same coin, it is closer to the truth to say that imagination + collaboration are two of the three elements of a basic formula that may be written out as imagination + collaboration = creativity.
