Michael Elia
December 2, 2024
Although culture can be observed to an extent in other species, especially primate species,
human culture is understood to be immensely more complicated. Human culture encompasses
most aspects of human life, and this plethora of cultural knowledge is directly transmitted
between generations. The five main ways that human culture differs from its’ primate
counterparts are multiple variants, variations across communities, cumulative cultural change,
active teaching, and imitative teaching.
Multiple variants can be understood as the many aspects of culture that interact to create human
culture. This is evident when thinking about the areas of human life that culture touches. The pop
culture understanding of culture helps to highlight multiple variants, as culture is understood as
food, music and art, fashion, language and dialect, etc. in these terms.
Variation across communities refers to the different cultural expressions of distinct
groups within a species. This is evidenced by the cultural differences between countries and even
local communities. For example, if driving through the U.S., one may drive through many
different cultural zones between states, cities, and even smaller towns located relatively close to
each other.
Cumulative cultural change is uniquely human and refers to the accumulation of
behaviors/knowledge that leads to innovations that one person would not be able to create by
themself. A good example of cumulative cultural change is the paradigm shifts in different fields
of scientific research. Sigmund Freud, although his ideals have mostly been done away with in
counseling psychology, is still known as the father of modern psychology and many current
psychological philosophies have been adopted and modified from Freudian practices.
Active teaching is also uniquely human and is very apparent in most cultures. Children
are actively taught by parents and other significant figures from birth. Around age 6, and maybe
even earlier if attending preschool, a majority of human children are put through school where
they are actively taught for over a decade by many adult figures. Active learning also occurs in
the home and in social settings, such as parents reprimanding a child for bad behavior or a friend
teaching another friend how to participate in one of their favorite hobbies.
Human children are much more inflexible in imitative learning than chimpanzees and
tend to copy adults more precisely. This can be observed in young children copying their
parent’s actions during play and suggests that humans are more adapted to culture than other
species.
Culture is defined as a set of learned behaviors transferred between generations via
learning, and in this sense, culture does exist in other species. An example of this is the
knowledge and use of tools in different primate species. However, human culture may need to be
defined in a different way, as our culture is so engrained in us and dictates the majority of our
lives and decisions. Humans also rely on learning to transmit culture much more heavily than
other species. Although other species may observe and copy another member to acquire food or
other resources, humans actively transmit knowledge and information to each other every day.
Gruber et. al. argue that although apes have culture, they may not recognize it due to lower social
learning abilities (2015). So, although other species do exhibit culture by definition, the extent to
which that culture can compare to humans is minimal. Perhaps human culture needs a definition
of its’ own to reflect how much more complex it is than culture observed in other species.
References
Boesch C. 2003. Is culture a golden barrier between human and chimpanzee? Evolutionary
Anthropology. 12:82-91.
Gruber, T., Zuberbuhler, K., Clement, F., & van Schaik, C. (2015). Apes have culture but may
not know that they do. Frontiers in Psychology, 6.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00091
