150 years ago, Darwin published "The Descent of Man" -- another great intuition by one of the greatest scientists in history. Today, we understand how humans are what they are because they collaborate with each other -- something that we tend to forget in our current views that emphasize cutthroat competition. Here is how Richerson, Gavrilets, and De Waal comment on this point in their recent article on "Science"
"What makes us different is that our ancestors evolved greatly enhanced abilities for (and reliance on) cooperation, social learning, and cumulative culture—traits emphasized already by Darwin. Cooperation allowed for environmental risk buffering, cost reduction, and the access to new resources and benefits through the “economy of scale.” Learning and cumulative culture allowed for the accumulation and rapid spread of beneficial innovations between individuals and groups. The enhanced abilities to learn from and cooperate with others became a universal tool, removing the need to evolve specific biological organs for specific environmental challenges. These human traits likely evolved as a response to increasing high-frequency climate changes on the millennial and submillennial scales during the Pleistocene. Once the abilities for cumulative culture and extended cooperation were in place, a suite of subsequent evolutionary changes became possible and likely unavoidable."
