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Becoming Human
A Theory of Ontogeny
Michael Tomasello • Belknap Press © 2019 • 392 pages

Science / Biology

Take-Aways
• “Human culture” gave rise to a new dynamic in evolution.
• Human cognition distinguishes subjectivity and objectivity.
• Common consciousness and points of view are pivotal for human community and communication.
• Human communities learn and pass on cultural knowledge in unique ways.
• Human inventiveness is almost always collaborative.
• Human collaboration begins early, first with adults and then with colleagues.
• Human beings don’t merely work with one another. They make sacrifices for one another.
• Collaboration and cooperation evolved into culture.
• Human beings developed a moral identity.

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 Recommendation
According to Charles Darwin, human beings evolved by natural selection – as did all other living things,
including those with whom people share common ancestors. But unlike the great apes, humans live in a
universe of cities, cars, computers, music, literature and nation-states. People have culture, which emerged
as the expression of a psychology that enables a community and cooperation. These make culture and its
transmission possible. Psychologist Michael Tomasello has produced a work that is dense, and which, at
times, addresses disputes that will most interest specialists in evolutionary psychology. But his overview
will engage anyone fascinated by how humans evolved from great apes into creatures that reach higher and
higher levels of knowledge, technology and culture.

Summary

“Human culture” gave rise to a new dynamic in evolution.

When Charles Darwin claimed in The Descent of Man that human beings and everything that associates
with them are a product of evolution by natural selection, many people experienced shock. They had
difficulty imagining how humans could go from being apes in the jungle to discovering the laws of physics,
inventing engines and trains, and building vast structures.

“At some point in human history a new evolutionary process arose. A telltale sign is that
not all humans live amid telescopes, symphony orchestras and the British Parliament but
instead live among their own distinctive artifacts, symbols and institutions.” ”

Human beings fundamentally differ from other animals. In the course of human evolution and history,
a “new evolutionary process” emerged. This involved culture that people understand as a form of social
order or community, one that evolved to adapt to specific environments. People who are part of a culture
orchestrate their lives in relation with one another, and ultimately establish standards. From an evolutionary
standpoint, the crucial question is: How did humans develop the intellectual and social aptitudes and skills
that made culture possible?

Human cognition distinguishes subjectivity and objectivity.

Humans’ direct living relatives, the great apes, also evolved intellectual and social capacities, which
they directed toward seeking food and forms of competition with one another. Humans, by contrast,
evolved unique skills that enabled cooperation individually and in larger groups. Cooperation provides the
foundation of culture. This is how individual humans develop and mature over the course of their lives.

“Mature human thinking is structured by the basic distinction, recognized since the
ancient Greeks, between subjective and objective (or appearance and reality, belief and
truth, opinion and fact).”

Human intellectual aptitudes had to evolve in a way that supported their activities within the social
sphere. Human intellectual activities exist within their ability to distinguish subjectivity from objectivity.

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 This distinction emerges from the recognition that an individual’s point of view and perception may not
correspond to the world. People can’t come to that realization individually. They need to be part of a shared
community or culture.

Common consciousness and points of view are pivotal for human community and
communication.

The capacity to share awareness and points of view proves crucial to social activities and communication.
Primates other than humans react and respond to the various sounds others make. Using sounds or
vocalizations to purposely direct other people’s attention to objects or events in the common external world
distinguishes humans. Thus, human beings coordinate how they see and think about the world. Children,
for example, point at things, sending people’s attention in that direction. This “gestural communication”
enables common consciousness – a sense of a common, shared world and forms of cooperation. Eventually,
humans codify this communication into a standardized form. Near-human relatives like the great apes
don’t communicate with a shared, conventional language. They lack the shared intentions and common
consciousness that is a significant human characteristic.

Human communities learn and pass on cultural knowledge in unique ways.

How human communities learn and transmit their knowledge to others is singular and distinct from similar
characteristics in other animals. This is readily evident in “cumulative cultural evolution.” For example,
when someone creates something useful and important, others embrace and add to it. This harnesses
people’s collective knowledge, intelligence and skills to benefit the entire group. Cumulative cultural
evolution takes advantage of the fact that humans imitate one another and conform to the broader behaviors
of the group. Humans can teach one another, and transmit knowledge and skills from one generation to the
next.

“Social learning and cultural transmission, in their broadest senses, are ubiquitous in the
animal kingdom. But the human versions are clearly special.”

Cultural evolution and “cultural learning” don’t orient only toward the transmission of knowledge and
ability. They’re also important for establishing and grounding group identity. People’s willingness to
conform to the group’s customs and conventions make group identity intelligible and enable people to
trust other members of the group. In this context, people tend to imitate and conform with rituals and
conventions that have no specific, instrumental purpose. Unlike great apes, members of a culture acquire
knowledge and learn various practices, and bond with other members of their culture. This begins in early
childhood.

Human inventiveness is almost always collaborative.

Isolated individuals don’t perform creative or inventive work. When they face complex, difficult-to-solve
problems, or questions whose answers are not obvious, people tend to do better when they work together.
Children do this by the time they are five or six, when they understand the concept of belief and can discuss
their respective points of view. The process through which people discuss belief and accommodate their

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 beliefs to one another gives rise to “reason-giving,” in which people provide a justification for their beliefs.
Providing reasons and justifications for beliefs helps connect beliefs, gives them coherence and ultimately
grounds people in reason.

“Much, if not most, of the creative work in which humans engage is not done individually,
but rather collaboratively, as individuals put their heads together to solve novel
problems.” ”

From childhood, people think and solve challenges collaboratively. In doing so, they discuss and adjudicate
various beliefs, making collective decisions and sharing concepts that incorporate multiple points of view.
From the perspective of childhood, this represents a significant stage of development. It associates with the
child becoming sufficiently rational to begin formal education that ultimately trains him or her to become a
full-fledged, active member of the community.

Human collaboration begins early, first with adults and then with colleagues.

When human beings developed a way of living relying heavily on cooperation, humans’ relationships and
their form of social life changed significantly. Unlike the great apes, from early on in human history and
evolution, humans developed cooperative relationships that enabled them to act under the umbrella of “we.”
This involved people regarding one another as equally valuable and respected partners. With all members
of the group regarding and assessing themselves thus, people perceive themselves as being part of a cultural
group and having a “moral identity.”

“We thus enter into a web of normative relations in which each collaborative partner
is accountable to the other for treating her with appropriate respect by responsibly
following mutually understood (and implicitly agreed to) normative standards.”

Distinctly human intellectual life begins following nine months, when infants begin to engage in mutual
activities with adults. The common aspect of these activities demands a common consciousness, which
naturally involves participants viewing their activities from their own points of view. These early activities
occur only with adults, but eventually they occur with colleagues or peers, which changes the relationship
to one of collaboration in which each partner views the other as equal. This relationship requires respect,
equality and, ultimately, trust. Partners become responsible to one another, and vest in a prescriptive code
for comporting themselves toward one another.

Human beings don’t merely work with one another. They make sacrifices for one
another.

Humans fight to protect their homes, communities and countries. Human beings do countless, mundane,
day-to-day things to help one another. They donate food and clothing. They offer seats on buses or trains.

“Sympathy for others is the sine qua non of morality…Central to any sense of morality is
also a sense of fairness.”

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 This “prosociality,” which has evolutionary roots across various animal species, emerges from the
development process. Early on, sympathy might motivate, but eventually this takes a “normative turn,”
and people act out of duty. This developmental process moves from sympathy to a desire for justice and,
ultimately, to when individuals place others’ interests and needs above their own. To be just or fair to
another person differs from being kind. Justice requires equality, and can supersede kindness and egotism.
Although other primates like great apes are social and need to live with each other with a minimum of
conflict, human beings add a duty – a moral obligation – to treat each other as equals.

Collaboration and cooperation evolved into culture.

Collaborating with people, treating them as equals, and being willing to sacrifice for them, evolved and
expanded until it became the larger, more ambitious undertaking, “culture.” “Modern humans” expanded
their sense of social identity away from individuals and toward the group, and governed by distinguishing
between the “in-group” and the “out-group” – between “us” and “them.” To manage group coherence and
functioning, humans developed mechanisms for self-regulation by which the group can codify how it expects
members to behave. The group ultimately polices these “social norms,” and regards people who fail to
conform as a threat to the integrity of the group.

“To maintain cooperation within their distinct cultural groups, humans have evolved
a unique form of social control in which the group as a whole expresses its collective
expectations for individual behavior.”

Agreements between two individuals are easy enough to walk away from. Social norms, on the other hand,
represent a “we” that existed prior to an individual’s birth. By the time children are five, they have a feeling
for the “we” they are part of. They feel connected to the people they do things with and to the group as a
whole. They begin to sense the importance of justice and fairness. This is no longer about the well-being of
individuals, but about the functioning of the group as a whole. If conflict or dysfunction occur, individuals
have a responsibility to seek solutions that benefit the group as a whole and its individual members.

Human beings developed a moral identity.

All primates assess the usefulness and viability of potential partners. That is a matter of survival. As humans
moved toward a socially driven mode of living that hinged on cooperation and collaboration, the level
at which they assessed potential partners and group members escalated in its intensity and detail. Each
individual had to find appropriate people to work with, and that individual had to prove suitable for others
to work with, too. Individuals assess others, and others assess them. Individuals needed to assess themselves
to manage the image they project to others. Evaluator and evaluated, criticizing and criticized, all under the
banner of a single “we” and a prescriptive code of behavior, is how people develop an inner moral identity.
As children, people develop moral identities in relationship to other members of their community, and that
includes how they think about, defend and rationalize their actions.

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 About the Author
Michael Tomasello is an American developmental and comparative psychologist and linguist. He is co-
director of the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center and professor of psychology at Duke University,
and co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

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