Never let overwhelming similarities obscure fundamental differences.
— Leslie A. White, personal communication (ca. 1960)
I think that Vaesen's article is exemplary in characterizing the differences between human and ape technology until about the beginnings of the Neolithic. Since then ape technology seems unchanged (except for a few items some captive apes may have learned from humans). Note that my argument is not meant to diminish apes; they are, on their own terms, utterly amazing creatures. Chimpanzees can, for example, do dentistry (McGrew & Tutin Reference McGrew and Tutin1972) (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Belle is removing Bandit's loose tooth with a small stick while Shadow observes. Copyright © W.C. McGrew.
And I will always be in awe of Gombe's Figans, who, at just the right moment, quietly announced impending danger, scattering the whole troop and leaving the newly opened box of bananas all to himself (Rappaport Reference Rappaport and Rappaport1979). Such creativity and imagination with such modest tools are remarkable.
It seems plausible that some neurological capacities account for the differences between apes and pre-Neolithic humans; but since then, the explosion of technology, science, knowledge, and religion is due not to anything particularly neurological but to things explicitly cultural. Things like:
-
Village life – with technological specialization, emerging immediately after the first plant and animal domestication, requiring defensive fortifications to protect stored food and seed against raiders, implausible for individuals, but relatively simple for a group with some leadership (utterly novel 10,000 years ago).
-
Transportation – allowing the easy movement of people and things over vast distances starting with, say, the Silk Road; then the development of shipping (sails, compasses, accurate clocks); then trains, cars, and trucks; then 2,000 contemporary airlines moving 2 billion passengers per year (increasing at about 5% a year, hence, doubling in 15 years).
-
The sharing of knowledge – ranging from things such as the Rosetta stone, both the actual one and the language-learning computer program; the Google project to scan and make available all the books ever written; the huge explosion of education, and particularly higher education, making the most sophisticated thought and practice available retail (currently, more than 80,000 Chinese students are enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States; 37% of students at the University of Michigan are from abroad).
-
Cell phones – a while ago I read that half the people in the world had never made a phone call; but today, about 60 people per hundred own cell phones, and many of those who don't will live in homes with people who do; the first mobile phone (a car phone) appeared in the mid 1950s; countries with relatively few cell phones are political dictatorships, where leadership prohibits them (Burma, Laos, Cambodia).
-
Symphony orchestras.
-
The instantaneous emergence of whole new global technologies – for example, the iPhone was first sold mid-year 2007; by the beginning of 2011, more than 300,000 “apps” were available for the iPhone; as I write this 7 months later, there are an additional 125,000, that's 18,000 new ones per month; the iPhone 4S5 with Siri, the personal assistant, is just out.
-
Computer fluency – There are about 11 million people in the world fluent in one or another computer programming language; more than 3 millionFootnote
1
(others estimate 4 million) of them use C++, arguably more than any other computer language.
None of these things, or things like them, are due to changes in the brain. They are due to innovations in the way people can work collectively at vast projects such as building a medieval cathedral (probably the first truly international industry)Footnote
2
or the World Trade Center in Bahrain.Footnote
3
They are due to the fact that thousands of otherwise ordinary individuals are acting in coordinated ways to achieve otherwise impossible outcomes; lately not so much in gangs but in networks. Imagine how many people have a hand in manufacturing a Toyota.
None of this hinges on brain changes. These things hinge on how our brains are used (or maybe how they use us).
The medieval cathedrals are an excellent case in point. They were constructed with only the very simplest machines: wedges, pulleys, levers. Many of the techniques used, particularly in the forming of vaults, are unknown to us; some restorers of 600-year-old cathedrals (e.g., E. E. Viollet le Duc, who rebuilt Notre Dame between 1845 and 1864) have made many ingenious inferences and have helped us to understand what seems almost impossible (Reiff Reference Reiff1971). Some of these magnificent buildings were under construction for 200 years. And most of them were, in effect, built of wood by carpenters; masons then laid stone over the wood, the wood then removed, leaving what we see today. Wrote Viollet le Duc in about 1860:
A well-made scaffolding is a feature of the builder's art which engages his best intelligence and his thorough supervision, for the real skill of the builder can be judged from the manner in which he places his scaffolding.… If the scaffoldings are massive, if they employ wood in profusion, the [subsequent] workmen are well aware of it: they judge the chief's degree of practical knowledge from this provisional work, and they recognize any inclinations of his from his abuse of means.… [T]he very lives of his workmen depend on it. (Fitchen Reference Fitchen1961)
Here we see the art of scaffolding: intelligence, supervision, teamwork, skill, awareness, life itself – that is, leadership. And when done, it is torn down.
This is all organization, cooperation, planning, teaching, engaging the skills of hundreds or thousands of different people with different background and training to make a cathedral or an iPhone. Without offense, we see nothing like this in chimpanzees.
You have
Access
Never let overwhelming similarities obscure fundamental differences.
— Leslie A. White, personal communication (ca. 1960)I think that Vaesen's article is exemplary in characterizing the differences between human and ape technology until about the beginnings of the Neolithic. Since then ape technology seems unchanged (except for a few items some captive apes may have learned from humans). Note that my argument is not meant to diminish apes; they are, on their own terms, utterly amazing creatures. Chimpanzees can, for example, do dentistry (McGrew & Tutin Reference McGrew and Tutin1972) (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Belle is removing Bandit's loose tooth with a small stick while Shadow observes. Copyright © W.C. McGrew.
And I will always be in awe of Gombe's Figans, who, at just the right moment, quietly announced impending danger, scattering the whole troop and leaving the newly opened box of bananas all to himself (Rappaport Reference Rappaport and Rappaport1979). Such creativity and imagination with such modest tools are remarkable.
It seems plausible that some neurological capacities account for the differences between apes and pre-Neolithic humans; but since then, the explosion of technology, science, knowledge, and religion is due not to anything particularly neurological but to things explicitly cultural. Things like:
Village life – with technological specialization, emerging immediately after the first plant and animal domestication, requiring defensive fortifications to protect stored food and seed against raiders, implausible for individuals, but relatively simple for a group with some leadership (utterly novel 10,000 years ago).
Transportation – allowing the easy movement of people and things over vast distances starting with, say, the Silk Road; then the development of shipping (sails, compasses, accurate clocks); then trains, cars, and trucks; then 2,000 contemporary airlines moving 2 billion passengers per year (increasing at about 5% a year, hence, doubling in 15 years).
The sharing of knowledge – ranging from things such as the Rosetta stone, both the actual one and the language-learning computer program; the Google project to scan and make available all the books ever written; the huge explosion of education, and particularly higher education, making the most sophisticated thought and practice available retail (currently, more than 80,000 Chinese students are enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States; 37% of students at the University of Michigan are from abroad).
Cell phones – a while ago I read that half the people in the world had never made a phone call; but today, about 60 people per hundred own cell phones, and many of those who don't will live in homes with people who do; the first mobile phone (a car phone) appeared in the mid 1950s; countries with relatively few cell phones are political dictatorships, where leadership prohibits them (Burma, Laos, Cambodia).
Symphony orchestras.
The instantaneous emergence of whole new global technologies – for example, the iPhone was first sold mid-year 2007; by the beginning of 2011, more than 300,000 “apps” were available for the iPhone; as I write this 7 months later, there are an additional 125,000, that's 18,000 new ones per month; the iPhone 4S5 with Siri, the personal assistant, is just out.
Computer fluency – There are about 11 million people in the world fluent in one or another computer programming language; more than 3 millionFootnote 1 (others estimate 4 million) of them use C++, arguably more than any other computer language.
None of these things, or things like them, are due to changes in the brain. They are due to innovations in the way people can work collectively at vast projects such as building a medieval cathedral (probably the first truly international industry)Footnote 2 or the World Trade Center in Bahrain.Footnote 3 They are due to the fact that thousands of otherwise ordinary individuals are acting in coordinated ways to achieve otherwise impossible outcomes; lately not so much in gangs but in networks. Imagine how many people have a hand in manufacturing a Toyota.
None of this hinges on brain changes. These things hinge on how our brains are used (or maybe how they use us).
The medieval cathedrals are an excellent case in point. They were constructed with only the very simplest machines: wedges, pulleys, levers. Many of the techniques used, particularly in the forming of vaults, are unknown to us; some restorers of 600-year-old cathedrals (e.g., E. E. Viollet le Duc, who rebuilt Notre Dame between 1845 and 1864) have made many ingenious inferences and have helped us to understand what seems almost impossible (Reiff Reference Reiff1971). Some of these magnificent buildings were under construction for 200 years. And most of them were, in effect, built of wood by carpenters; masons then laid stone over the wood, the wood then removed, leaving what we see today. Wrote Viollet le Duc in about 1860:
A well-made scaffolding is a feature of the builder's art which engages his best intelligence and his thorough supervision, for the real skill of the builder can be judged from the manner in which he places his scaffolding.… If the scaffoldings are massive, if they employ wood in profusion, the [subsequent] workmen are well aware of it: they judge the chief's degree of practical knowledge from this provisional work, and they recognize any inclinations of his from his abuse of means.… [T]he very lives of his workmen depend on it. (Fitchen Reference Fitchen1961)
Here we see the art of scaffolding: intelligence, supervision, teamwork, skill, awareness, life itself – that is, leadership. And when done, it is torn down.
This is all organization, cooperation, planning, teaching, engaging the skills of hundreds or thousands of different people with different background and training to make a cathedral or an iPhone. Without offense, we see nothing like this in chimpanzees.