Just a moment...

The key to understanding how humans evolved and why we are so different from other animals is to recognize that we are a cultural species. Probably over a million years ago, members of our evolutionary lineage began learning from each other in such a way that culture became cumulative.

In fact, by age one, infants use their own early cultural knowledge to figure out who tends to know things, and then use this performance information to focus their learning, attention, and memory. Infants are well known to engage in what developmental psychologists call “social referencing.” When an infant, or young child, encounters something nov

In other words, human beings cannot live alone. It is not that we cannot bear loneliness or that we want people to talk to, so much as simply not being able to live, on the level of survival. And in order to “divide labor” with another person, one must believe in that person. One cannot cooperate with someone whom one doubts.