Comment by randomImmigrant
11 hours ago
We really don’t know this for certain at all. We do know crows can communicate information about the face of a person they dislike to their murder, including to new generations. It seems a bit of a stretch to say their cultural transmission is quite that narrow.
In general, pre-writing human oral culture seems to have dynamics much in common with such abilities in other animals. Barring error correction mechanisms, oral knowledge can degrade in transmission, limiting its reach and success.
This isn’t to say human language doesn’t have its distinctive features that are very useful. But the language came from a different brain, and is suited to the particularity of our brains. We should hesitate to place solely on language something that’s also driven by us having more things to say.
We kind of do though since we don't see crows accumulating knowledge at any scale comparable to humans and using this knowledge to shape their environment in increasingly complex ways. And crows very obviously do make tools and even teach each other to do it, so it's not like they don't have the inclination for it.
The language itself is a a human invention, and a product of how our brains are wired. However, there's a dialectical process here where the language shapes us in turn, and both our minds and our language evolve together. The reason we have more things to say stems from us accumulating knowledge and expanding out horizons through the use of our language.