Joseph Henrich — Humans defeated smarter species with cultural evolution

Human history is driven by the expansion of collective brains, where interconnected populations accumulate and transmit sophisticated cultural knowledge rather than relying solely on individual intelligence. Joseph Henrich, a professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, argues that the Industrial Revolution emerged from the consolidation of Europe’s collective brain, facilitated by the Catholic Church’s systematic dismantling of intensive kinship systems. This shift toward monogamous nuclear families enabled greater social mobility, urbanization, and the flow of ideas. While individual brain size has declined over the last 10,000 years, human success stems from externalizing cognitive tasks into cultural practices and institutions. This process of cultural evolution, which operates similarly to natural selection, explains why societies with different historical trajectories exhibit distinct psychological traits, such as varying levels of trust, individualism, and analytical thinking.