Collective Learning Research Paper

Humans have walked planet Earth for less than 300,000 years but for some reason we have outsmarted all other species on the planet to have ever lived combined. Why did this happen?. The answer lies in our ability to learn collectively. And in this paper I plan to trace the roots of collective learning from the use of stone tools to the present and its potential in the future. When I look at the technology around me, my phone, my laptop, my car, I think about the effort and knowledge that went into creating these things. The same kind of effort and knowledge went into creating human societies, religions, legal systems, literature, and sciences. All of this is not the work of one man but the collective effort of millions of minds interacting …show more content…
He proposes that hominine species held lesser degrees of collective learning. This would mean that collective learning has had millions of years to evolve. Stone tools present a technological advancement combined with the use of language which could have been caused by collective learning. This would enable us to better understand the origin of collective learning through a broader period of …show more content…
John Shea, a professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University says that about 250,000 years ago, we see the kind of pattern variation among stone tools, similar to that in which we see in spoken languages nowadays, according to the first archeological record. He later states that after about 250,000 years ago, stone tools developed in South Africa differed from those in East Africa. And those in East Africa are different from the stone tools in Europe, and so on. It can be concluded that, from region to region people have different information of stone tool designs. Furthermore Shea talks about how 200,000 years ago, changes in the human skull are evident.He says that human skulls begin to resemble. These changes include having a flexed bottom which is required to speak. To break sound up into very short bits, and to communicate effectively. That 's an important change. We know this from physical anthropology because without a flexed bottom of your skull, it 's very difficult to produce speech, but with a flexed bottom of your skull it 's very easy to choke. So that had to be a really important characteristic. Speech had to be an important characteristic for humans to survive with that quality. That tells us that before that property emerged, there was some precursor to spoken language. Something that