We can build on their wisdom.
And as a result, our ideas do accumulate,
and our technology progresses.
And this cumulative cultural adaptation,
as anthropologists call
this accumulation of ideas,
is responsible for everything around you
in your bustling and teeming everyday lives.
I mean the world has changed out of all proportion
to what we would recognize
even 1,000 or 2,000 years ago.
And all of this because of cumulative cultural adaptation.
The chairs you're sitting in, the lights in this auditorium,
my microphone, the iPads and iPods that you carry around with you --
all are a result
of cumulative cultural adaptation.
Now to many commentators,
cumulative cultural adaptation, or social learning,
is job done, end of story.
Our species can make stuff,
therefore we prospered in a way that no other species has.