thinking

Very fundumental question,

Maybe if we was in last century we choose language for answer to this question, but now we know that other animals have language.

Some believe maybe free will is the answer, but animals can make desicion and choose one thing from another one.

And I can say another examples that human and animals both have.

I think we shouldn't seeking the special talent or cognition which in mankind exist but in other species not. The mankind and other species have similar abilities.

But the diffirence is ( in my opinion), each cognition and property is advance and more complex in mankind than others.

If you know a cognitive ability which mankind has but others not, let me know.

Regards,

Mahdi

It is merely the cognitive functionality of human being that cause them to be superior than any other specie. Understanding the psychology of other species helps in understanding them and its example can be seen in national geographic videos when a human handles species way larger than humans and taming animals like elephants, lions etc.

I believe that it is difficult, at this time, to come up with a definitive answer. Many of the answers that we gave to this question in the past (such as making tools, collective intelligence, etc.) have been negated by researches in cognitive ethology and other fields within animal studies. We have discovered that other animals use tools. Other animals have knowledge that is 'cultural' (that is, knowledge that is passed on from one generation to the next - nest building is one example). As well, the use of 'language' and communicative signs (semiotic behavior) is not unique to human beings. Many animal species engage in ritual behaviormand have an appreciation for aesthetics (this can be seen in birds, for example). Some animals also show the ability to conceptualize, something which was believed to be a uniquely human capacity. Complex emotional life, affection, devotion, loyalty, and even a sense of humor, are also not unique to human beings. The field of animal studies is making new discoveries every day. What we have learned in the past 20 years has negated beliefs about other animals that we have held for millenia. Perhaps, the one thing that seems to distinguish us so far is our desire to distinguish ourselves, to find out what makes us different from our fellow creatures. Yet, science itself is showing us that he differences between us and other species are ones of degree, rather than kind. If there is any progress, it is that we are finally beginning to embrace our kinship with our fellow creatures.

I perceive that the major driving force which made mankind superb on the earth is the intelligence power of the brain. The ‘quantitative advantage’ of human brain refers to that the magnitude of the memory capacity of the brain is tremendously larger than that of any advanced species. This forms a physiological foundation for the emergence of inference intelligence beyond the action intelligence that we share with other species.

On the basis of the quantitative advantage, the ‘qualitative advantage’ of human brain is the possession of the abstract layer of memory, which leads to the symbolic reasoning capacity. The qualitative advantage towards inference intelligence is a great leap from the reflexive action intelligence as those of animals. The inference intelligence has resulted in languages, arts, mathematics, philosophies, and every glorious aspect of human civilization.

I do not think it is memory capacity as many studies on pigeons and great apes have shown superior memory compared to humans. Just look at Savants. What makes us special is our domain generality, i.e. broad ecological niche (like ravens) aka large flexibility. Tool use and even teaching has been in other species. Also language is not strictly human. It is the transition from more quantity of many of the above mentioned features (tool use, free hands, large capacity for storing items, teaching etc) to a new quality. As Halford put it: relational complexity is quite high in humans, so we can "understand" far more and accordingly influence and shape our environment better (instead of just adapting to it)

We separated cognitively from other creatures because of our brain mechanisms for creative imagery -- a capacity for invention that enabled us to change the world in fundamental ways. See *The Cognitive Brain*.

There is not only one feature to explain the differences.

We can communicate in social groups so we can cooperate to reach difficult goals.

The mind is free, we have phantasy, we are able to anticipate far future.

We can use the upper extremities with sensible hands to manipulate matter.

We are curious and able to note and archive knowledge.

and much more ...

It is a very difficult question. In biological view we are only one primate species within more than 200 different species. But, we have conquered the world (there are few species with such distribution (much of them are invertebrate) and went into space.

We are able to think about sophisticate action a long time before. However, it is not enough to define human kind as all great Apes, especially chimpanzee, are able to do the same. More important, we use articulated language to communicate between us which make able to share abstract background.

Tools are not enough because we discover more and more tools maker within animals (most of them are Mammals and Birds), and, for much of them, young learn from adults how to make tools (i.e. it is not an inherited trait). However, humans use much more tools than any other animals. Thus it is not the tool maker which is important but the importance of the use of them.

Collective intelligence it is not enough also because all animals living in groups (a least Mammals and Birds) have a collective intelligence.

There is not only one factor which make us different from other animals, but numerous factors taken together.

Best

Jean-Luc Voisin

The behavior of any organism is defined by its needs (hunger, sex, curiosity, fear, etc.). In my opinion, the main difference between animals and humans is that the system of the needs of animals is innately closed and that of humans is open. The fact that the animal system of needs is closed does not mean that the behavior of animals is automatic, instinctive, etc. This simply means that the animal is able to construct and pursue a limited amount of goals because the construction and maintenance of a goal require the activation of an innate need.

For example, a hungry chimpanzee can demonstrate very complex and diverse behavior including the manufacture and use of tools. However, a saturated ape does not manufacture tools in store because for apes the manufacture and use of tools is not a special activity but a consequence of the activation of an innate need. If no need is activated even useful activities cannot be performed Only humans can manufacture tools ( drive cars, write texts, etc, etc,) regardless the state of their innate needs because the human brain is able to construct learned needs which are as strong and stable as innate needs.

All other distinctions between humans and animals are the consequence of this characteristic. For example, animals also have language but unlike human language, the language of animals always has a limited amount of signals. This reflects the fact that animals have a limited number of activities where their language can be used.

Our evolutionary history made us special. Some 20 mill.yrs ago, early hominoids (ancestral apes+humans) apparently evolved from arboreal creatures to "aquarboreals" (eg, most Mio-Pliocene "apes" such as Oreopithecus & later the australopiths) who lived in swamp forests, spending part of their time in the water, collecting aquatic herbaceous vegetation (as lowland gorillas still do) & hard-shelled invertebrates (work of Alan Shabel). With the beginning of the Ice Ages, wast territories became available on the continental shelves of Africa & southern Eurasia, allowing Homo to collect shellfish & other littoral foods, and to disperse as far as Flores, the Cape & England. From the coasts, Homo groups verntured inland along rivers, collecting drowned herbivores, cattails, salmon & everything they could find at the oxbow lakes & beaver ponds where their fossils lay. The abundant DHA in aquatic & waterside foods allowed the evolution of large brains etc. Google, eg, "greg laden guest post verhaegen", 'econiche homo" or "rhys evans vaneechoutte". --marc verhaegen

As you collect information concerning this subject please consider the information in the book "Social: Why our brains are wired to connect" by Matthew Lieberman. ISBN 9780307889098.

You ask: What made humans so different: walking? working? making tools? using languages? collective intelligence?

-Walking on 2 long (esp.tibias) & stretched legs directly derives from wading vertically to spot & catch prey in very shallow water (// herons).

-Using & making tools is done by hard-object feeders: sea-otter (seafood), capuchin monkey (oysters, nuts), chimp (nuts).

-Working requires tools.

-Language requires: varied sound production (tone, rhythm: gibbon song), dialog (gibbon duet), voluntary breathing (as in diving spp), large brains (DHA), consonants (labial-dental-palatal-velar mouth closure for swallowing soft-wet-slippery foods), etc.

-Collective intelligence requires language.

IOW, our evolutionary history made us what we are: we evolved from climbing creatures who learnt to swim, dive, wade & walk. Google, eg,

-greg laden guest post verhaegen,

-econiche homo,

-rhys evans vaneechoutte.

Human Evolution soon devotes 2 special editions to this Litoral Theory (Pleistocene Homo trekking along coasts & rivers):

Proceedings of the Symposium "Human Evolution: Past, Present & Future" London 8-10.5.13:

SPECIAL EDITION PART 1 (end 2013):

-Introduction - Peter Rhys-Evans

-Human's Association with Water Bodies: the 'Exaggerated Diving Reflex' and its Relationship with the Evolutionary Allometry of Human Pelvic and Brain Sizes - Stephen Oppenheimer

-Human Ecological Breadth: Why Neither Savanna nor Aquatic Hypotheses can Hold Water - John Langdon

-Endurance Running versus Underwater Foraging: an Anatomical and Palaeoecological Perspective - Stephen Munro

-Wading Hypotheses of the Origin of Human Bipedalism - Algis Kuliukas

-The Aquatic Ape Evolves: Common Misconceptions and Unproven Assumptions about the So-Called Aquatic Ape Hypothesis - Marc Verhaegen

-The Epigenetic Emergence of Culture at the Coastline: Interaction of Genes, Nutrition, Environment and Demography - Lee Broadhurst & Michael Crawford

SPECIAL EDITION PART 2 (begin 2014) with 12 contributions.

--marc verhaegen

Within-species arms race involving social competition. For review see:

Flinn, M.V., Geary, D.C. & Ward, C.V. (2005). Ecological dominance, social competition, and coalitionary arms races: Why humans evolved extraordinary intelligence. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26(1), 10-46.

The most important proximal factor that makes humans different from other brainy vertebrates is our capacity for complex cumulative culture. Many other species can learn from one another but human cognition is highly specialized for imitation and teaching. Normal humans learn complex practices from each other relatively accurately and quickly. This allows us to acquire a large repertoire of complex skills, mostly during childhood, including language, technology, and social norms. Over the generations, innovations are added to existing skills, relatively rapidly evolving things that are far beyond the capacity of a single innovator to invent on his or her own. Take a stone tipped spear. The shaft has to be selected from the right wood and shaped to suit its purpose, thrusting versus throwing. The right sort of stone has to be skillfully knapped to produce the point. The shaft has to be shaped to receive the point, where it is secured using cordage and adhesives. No other species known can acquire such a complex set of skills by social learning.

Two domains of culture are particularly salient for our success as a species, technology and social organization. Tools substitute for anatomical specializations we lack; the spear substitutes for fangs and claws in hunting and cooking pots substitute for the long gut that herbivores have for digesting tough plant parts. Norms and social institutions organize our social lives so that we can live in larger, more cooperative groups than any species besides the eusocial insects. Modern "hi tech" tools are the product of a small army of highly trained, highly specialized, highly organized workers to the point that no one of them has more than a small fraction of the of the skills necessary to produce the finished product.

Cultural adaptations can evolve much faster than anatomical and social adaptations transmitted genetically. The products of learning and invention can be transmitted to our cultural "offspring." Sufficiently attractive innovations can spread very rapidly to large numbers of people. Think of fads and fashions. Evolutionary biologists speak of "adaptive radiations" when some fundamental innovation in a particular lineage leads it to evolve into a number of new species based on modifying the fundamental innovation to allow it to be deploying in a range of habitats. Humans had radiated into most of the world's terrestrial habitats by the end of the Pleistocene using locally specialized versions of a sophisticated hunting and gathering technology and tribal scale social systems. In the last 12,000 years the relatively benign climate of the Holocene has led most human societies evolve agricultural subsistence technologies and social systems larger in scale than the hunter-gather tribe. Roughly 7,000 languages are spoken in the world today, a rough index to the scale of the Holocene cultural adaptive radiation of humans.

A considerable number human anatomical, physiological, and behavioral characteristics are key to the evolution cumulative culture. Upright posture freed the hands for adaptation for tool making and using. Large brains support the cognition necessary for acquiring a large cultural repertoire. A relatively docile temperament and a capacity to form social bonds with non-relatives is crucial for building large societies. Hill, et al. (2009) provide a concise summary.

Hill, K., Barton, M. & Hurtado, A. M. (2009) The emergence of human uniqueness: Characters underlying behavioral modernity. Evolutionary Anthropology 18: 174-187.

What makes humans unique is that we evolved an innate ability for creative scientific reasoning. The art of tracking may well be the origin of science. Science may have evolved more than a hundred thousand years ago with the evolution of modern hunter-gatherers. My book "The Origin of Science" can be downloaded at http://www.cybertracker.org/science/books or https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Louis_Liebenberg/publications/

We don't know. What counts as a human? Right now, with very limited understanding of the history of hominid evolution, I don't think anyone knows.

Until recently, we were totally certain that there was no significant interbreeding between Neandertals and "modern" humans. Now we know there was a significant amount, especially for people of European descent. We know virtually nothing about the recently discovered Denisovans. Even less about the people discovered on Flores, even whether we should call them people.

We were "certain" that humans came to the Americas across the Bering straight about 14,000 years ago. Now, maybe people went back and forth across there a few times. Maybe some people came from west Africa to Brazil. Maybe some came from France and Spain to the east coast of North America. Maybe Polynesians made it to Ecuador.

This is a time where we are learning that we were wrong to think we knew so much before, and that we are too quick to eliminate possibilities due to the absence of current evidence. This is especially true when we consider that most of our data about human evolution comes from the places where remains are most likely to be preserved, and we are pretending that those places are therefore where everything happened.

Most of the places that humans have lived have not been investigated. Very large amounts of land that would have been the most desirable habitats during the periods of glacial advances are currently under the ocean. We know virtually nothing about these places. But we know people lived in them from the limited evidence we have found from the shallow areas of the sea (such as Doggerland in the North Sea).

And that's not even getting into the question of what is an "advanced" species. Cephalopods have been doing tremendously well for themselves for hundreds of millions of years and have a complex system of communication through color and shape changes and use of bioluminescence. They have extremely well developed visual systems, and demonstrate some very powerful cognitive abilities in laboratories and in their environments. They outnumber the entire population of vertebrates, and have been in existence longer. Are they "advanced"?

And social insects. The first farmers. They dominate many terrestrial ecosystems. Without them, human life would soon cease.

This is not a trivial issue. You can define advanced so that you can guarantee that humans are the most advanced if you want to, but then what's the point? To show those gibbons who's boss when they snatch our cell phones and swing off in the trees, waving articles from the Journal of Primatology in their general direction?

James Polichak said: "What counts as a human? Right now, with very limited understanding of the history of hominid evolution, I don't think anyone knows."

IMO, ape & human evolution are rel.well-known, probably better than the evolutions of many other organisms, if we only approach human evolution from a biological (comparative) viewpoint rather than from traditional fossil & very subjective (just-so) viewpoints.

As you say, "large amounts of land that would have been the most desirable habitats during the periods of glacial advances are currently under the ocean." Indeed, a biological approach of Homo leaves no doubt that Homo dispersed intercontinentally along coasts & rivers (rather than running over open plains, as popular & traditional views still believe): many archaic Homo fossils (eg, very clearly in most erectus, Petralona etc.) show pachyosteosclerotic skulls & postcrania, which is exclusively seen in littoral tetrapods. In the same way, platycephaly is typically seen in littoral mammals; this is also the case for intercontinental dispersal, for platymeria (cursorial mammals OTOH have latero-medially flattened femora), for ear exostoses, for dramatic brain enlargement, for the very wide pelvis with flaring ilia & long & horizontal femoral necks, for the many fossil & archeological coastal sites of Pleistocene Homo all over the Old World from Java to Angola to England, etc.

We have recently written a few papers on this (others are in press), eg,

-M Verhaegen & S Munro 2011 "Pachyosteosclerosis suggests archaic Homo frequently collected sessile littoral foods" HOMO J compar hum Biol 62:237-247

-S Munro & M Verhaegen 2011 "Pachyosteosclerosis in archaic Homo" :82-105 M Vaneechoutte cs eds 2011 "Was Man More Aquatic in the Past? Fifty Years after Alister Hardy: Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution" eBook Bentham Sci Publ

-M Verhaegen 2013 "The aquatic ape evolves: common misconceptions and unproven assumptions about the so-called aquatic ape hypothesis".

Or google "unproven assumptions Verhaegen".

Apparently, most typically human characteristics (as opposed to chimps) are the result of our littoral past & consumption of waterside & shallow water foods (eg, DHA), first along coasts (early-Pleistocene), later along rivers (later-Pleistocene): very varied diet & food collection (cf brain & intelligence), huge brain, very long legs (H.sapiens wading in freshwater milieus), basicranial flexion, external nose, etc. This was lately followed by domestication of different animals & plants.

In short the Pleistocene evolution of Homo: at prest predominantly beach-combing & littoral wading & shallow water diving, then + frequent freshwater wading, finally + domestication of dogs & bipedal walking on terra firma.

--marc verhaegen

"IMO, ape & human evolution are rel.well-known, probably better than the evolutions of many other organisms, if we only approach human evolution from a biological (comparative) viewpoint rather than from traditional fossil & very subjective (just-so) viewpoints."

This is my point. If you take a limited set of data to use and ignore all the rest, you can get an answer. And a "biological (comparative) viewpoint" is just an evolutionary viewpoint at a particular time.

And things like the possibility of Polynesians arriving in Ecuador in the 14th or 15th century, or Basques being aware of the Canadian Maritime Provinces from their extensive use of the Grand Banks fishing ground at around the same time are in no way an issue of fossilization.

In fact, most of what I mention is not about fossils. Fossilization is a process by which the remains of living matter are mineralized, and it takes a very long time. Bones from Doggerland are no more fossils than the remains at Göbekli Tepe. They are damper, but they are not fossils. Neandertal bones from 40Kya are not fossils. The DNA extracted from them is not a fossil. And the DNA samples from living breathing humans that are compared to those samples are certainly not fossils.

In your own answer, you jump from term to term, referring at times to "Homo", "archaic Homo", "man", Pleistocene Homo/man, and even Homo erectus fossils.

How does any of this clarify whether Neandertals should be considered human or not? Or Denisovans? Because if we're going to think hard about what makes humans different from other advanced species, if Neandertals and Denisovans and others are NOT human, then they become very critical cases for comparison to humans. If they ARE human, then they become something we have to explain about the nature of humanity in terms of its alleged adaptability, language, and cultural achievements, and we need to decide what other entities our comparisons to humans are.

In my opinion, we don't know enough about human and ape evolution to be able to claim that we know a particular amount of information. We don't even know what a human is.

I ignore nothing, James, please read the refs I provided (where the terms "archaic Homo" etc are explained. And of course, Neandertals & Denisovans are human, what else?

Very interesting topic, thank you all for your interesting contributions. Dear Yingxu, maybe you can interest a crazy proposal that I posted in May in the journal "Advances in Anthropology" titled "Love is the cause of human evolution."

IMHO the human has much more degrees of freedom in thinking and acting than other living organisms. He also is able to multiply this possibilities by interaction of many individuals and the creation of artifacts as tools. 

So we have tree very powerful arguments, why humans are successful.

1. the status of Neandertals and Denisovans as "humans" is not universally accepted. "what else" could they be is non-human sub-species of the genus Homo. Most of the extant categories of genus contain multiple species and sub-species. No one has an issue with saying that the butterfly found on island A is not the same as the butterfly on island B based on differences noted through examination of specimens.

2. My question about whether Neandertals and Denisovans are to be considered humans or not was a conditional statement. Saying yes or no does not address the implications.

The most important implications of saying yes are that these humans are extinct, and if we are to understand why humans are different than other animals we must explain why certain types of humans are extinct and what extinction of certain types of humans means for our definition of human.

We also knew nothing of the existence of the Denisovans until very recently. If they are humans, if is likely that there are other types of humans that we are unaware of due to inadequate sampling of geographical regions.

If we do not know how many types of humans there are, we cannot say we know what a human is.

3. telling someone to read your research to understand the definitions of terms as you use them when you have space here, and when they are skeptical of your arguments as presented here, is not reasonable. If I asked you to read a bunch of articles, would you go and do that?

4. ignoring nothing is impossible. at the minimum, ignoring nothing would mean reading all potentially relevant research, examining the data sets used to develop that research, and verifying the accuracy of the data sets and the link between the data sets and the research presented. I doubt you have examined every Neandertal bone ever discovered, or read every article relating to Neandertals.

5. Researchers such as Mr Richerson present highly relevant data of a sort that is not amenable to "a biological (comparative) viewpoint". Limiting the range of information you consider relevant despite other relevant information is not the way to answer a question such as this. Language and social organization are highly relevant, both to the issue in general and the question as asked. They are also relevant to classification of Neandertals and Denisovans, as these beings apparently had very different linguistic and social structures than Sapiens, based on available data that is much more extensive for Neandertals than Denisovans.

In sum, my conclusion remains the same: we do not have enough information to know what a human is.

James Polichak: "... Neandertals and Denisovans, as these beings apparently had very different linguistic and social structures than Sapiens." Apparently?? The neandertal diet differed from ours, although there was considerable overlap (e.g. enamel C & N isotopes in Richards cs 2001 PNAS), but there's no evidence they "had very different linguistic and social structures than Sapiens", on the contrary, e.g. see the attachment.

Marc, I am not sure what I'm supposed to infer about the linguistic abilities of Neandertals and Denisovans from a presentation that has nothing to do with either of them, but does manage to find space for some gibbon hooting.

So linguistic and social structures. Again. The linguistic and social structures of Sapiens permitted them to occupy just about every region on the planet, out-compete/assimilate the Neandertal and Denisovans, create increasingly complex social, political, and technological systems while expanding in population from (probably) a few hundred thousand members to about 7.5 billion members in a fraction of the time that the Neandertal remained rather static in material culture, population, and geographic area. Knowledge of Denisovans is rather weak, but it's highly likely that they also spent several hundred thousand years without developing writing, agriculture, and towns.

Regardless of speaking capabilities, Sapiens developed writing. Sapiens also developed complex networks of resource distributions and technological skills that enable this discussion to occur. That is an amazingly vast difference in language and society.

And certain theorists would ascribe this development, at its primal cause, to the widespread existence of grandmothers.

But feel free to fixate on the past and ignore the changes that permit such a fixation.

Hi James, as Darwin already suggested, the varied & loud sounds apes make are early preadaptations to human speech, but the immediate preadaptations (small mouth & masticatory reduction, voluntary breathing, huge brain) are easily explained in the light of Homo's early-Pleistocene dispersal along African & Eurasian coasts (e.g. the Mojokerto child was found amid barnacles & shells), where they waded & dived for littoral foods (shell-, crayfish, coconuts etc.), which are extremely rich in brain-specific nutrients (DHA, iodine etc.), had to be opened with hard tools (e.g. stones, shells) and to be sucked & swallowed rather than bitten & chewed (labial, dental, palatal etc. closure allowed the pronunciation of consonants). Neanderthals & Denisovians had all these preadaptations, but it's not certain whether they had already combined these into spoken language, see attachment.