Background to this project

Cultural – not genetic – adaptations have allowed humans to colonise the planet. While discovering the roots of human culture has been described as one of the 125 most pressing scientific questions of our time (Science, 2005), it remained unclear when such forms of culture first arose in our lineage. Previous research has argued that similar social learning mechanisms underlie modern human as well as early stone technology. But the latter shows long periods of what is best described as stasis – suggesting the underlying mechanisms were different. A better model for early hominins might be living non-human great apes. Instead of copying the know-how from others, i.e. copying know-how that lies beyond individual innovative powers ("supraindividual know-how"), ape approaches seem to be based on socially mediated individual reinventions of know-how ("latent solutions", or "latent know-how"; Tennie et al. 2009, 2020). Unlike know-how copying, latent know-how does not lead to 'cumulative cultural change' in know-how, in which technological changes in know-how accrue over generations. Latent know-how is thus a core candidate to account for early stone tool technology because, among other things, this provides an explanation for the empirically observed stasis in these tools. Using both a top-down and a bottom-up testing approach, the ERC STONECULT project, led by Claudio Tennie, experimentally tested whether early stone tools are manifestations of supraindividual know-how – which was at the time the null hypothesis in the field – or whether these tools are best accounted for with the latent know-how model. That is, STONECULT evaluated whether early stone tools were more similar to modern ape tools (latent) or modern human technologies (supraindual, mostly). The outcomes and conclusions of STONECULT informed several fields at once (e.g. anthropology, archaeology, comparative psychology, ethology, philosophy and primatology). It was the first major project to test the latent know-how account of early stone tools. Indeed, these predictions were confirmed: naive modern humans proved able to reinnovate early stone tool know-how, in the absence of know-how models. That is, these types of know-how are best seen as latent, not as supraindividual. This finding fits with the observed stasis in the archaeological record and it fits also with relevant primate work around stone tools (likewise conducted by the STONECULT grant). That is, early stone tool know-how can be - and likely was - within individual innovative reach. As such, it likely was not supraindividual know-how at the time. It was latent know-how. Cumulative cultural know-how will have therefore likely emerged much later (1-2 millions of years later) in our lineage than was often assumed at the start of the STONECULT project. The ERC STONECULT project radically transformed our understanding of the evolution of human culture.