Science & the Big Questions

What Made Us Unique

How we became a different kind of animal.

Scientific American

Topics: Animal Studies Cognition Cognitive Development Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Kevin Laland Social Behavior Social Learning

Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not

The hierarchies of Judeo-Christian religions mean that those cultures tend to fear their overlords. Beliefs like Shinto and Buddhism are more conducive to have faith in peaceful coexistence.

WIRED

Topics: Human Uniqueness Religious Groups Robots Technology

Chimpanzees Can’t Tell Us Much About Being Human

Although there is merit in recognizing how we resemble our primate relatives, sometimes we need to understand what sets our species apart.

SAPIENS

Topics: Animal Studies Human Evolution Human Uniqueness

Why Grandmothers May Hold The Key To Human Evolution

What made us human might have had less to do with men out hunting, and a lot more to do with what was going on at home — with grandmas and babies.

Goats & Soda, NPR

Topics: Cooperation Human Evolution Human Uniqueness Social Behavior

Was Science Wrong About Being Right?

Handedness is an ancient trait, but researchers are rethinking its roots.

Discover

Topics: Human Uniqueness

Neanderthals Were Artists and Thought Symbolically, New Studies Argue

Neanderthals created art and knew how to use symbols, new studies say.

Ars Technica

Topics: Cognition Human Uniqueness Language Neanderthals

Culture and the Mind: A New Theory of Human Intelligence

What role might culture play in intelligence? And how does human culture differ from culture found in other animals?

Science Weekly, The Guardian

Topics: Animal Studies Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Intelligence Kevin Laland Language Social Learning

Unlike Humans, Bonobos Shun Helpers and Befriend the Bullies

Given a choice, bonobos tend to prefer people who act like jerks and dominate. That’s very different than humans, who even as infants consistently prefer people who are cooperative and not mean.

Shots, NPR

Topics: Animal Studies Cooperation Human Uniqueness Social Behavior

Who First Buried the Dead?

Evidence of burial rites by the primitive, small-brained Homo naledi suggests that symbolic behavior is very ancient indeed.

Aeon

Topics: Cultural Evolution Death Human Evolution Human Uniqueness Ritual

Human Nature: Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, God-Like Technology

Creativity might just be the defining trait that makes us human, says E.O. Wilson, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed ‘Father of Biodiversity.’ But what exactly is the modern Homo sapiens, anyway?

Big Think

Topics: Creativity Human Uniqueness

Less Unique Than We Think

The idea that humans are special bumps up against Darwin’s great insight: the continuity of all life. David Barash reviews The Creative Spark by Agustín Fuentes and Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony by Kevin N. Laland.

The Wall Street Journal

Topics: Cognition Cooperation Creativity Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Imagination

Ravens Can Plan for the Future

They join an elite group of animals that includes great apes, but not monkeys or 3-year-old human children.

The Atlantic

Topics: Animal Studies Cognition Human Uniqueness

Chimps Pass Knowledge Along From Generation to Generation

Humans aren’t the only species that passes knowledge along to the next generation. A new study by primatologists at the University of St. Andrews discovered that chimpanzees also engage in “cumulative practice,” a process that allows subsequent generations to build on the skills honed by their elders.

The Week

Topics: Animal Studies Human Uniqueness

Raising Good Robots

We already have a way to teach morals to alien intelligences: it's called parenting. Can we apply the same methods to robots?

Aeon

Topics: Human Uniqueness Morality Robots

Who and What Are We? And When Did We Get Here?

The modern human’s capacity for symbolic information-processing truly is unique among living creatures. And this, of course, invites us to inquire just when our precursors acquired such exceptional cognitive traits. Do these traits have deep roots in the past, having emerged insensibly under natural selection as hominid brains enlarged? Or did they appear suddenly and all at once? And, if so, when?

Big Questions Online

Topics: Human Evolution Human Uniqueness Ian Tattersall