By MICHAEL TOMASELLO
Human beings do not like to think of themselves as animals. It is thus with decidedly mixed feelings that we regard the frequent reports that activities once thought to be uniquely human are also performed by other species: chimpanzees who make and use tools, parrots who use language, ants who teach. Is there anything left?
人类在感情上是很难认同他们也是动物的观点。因此，当其它物种也具有那些一度被认为是人类仅有的特点被频繁发现并报道时，他们肯定五味杂陈。黑猩猩也能够制造和使用工具，鹦鹉说着自己的鸟语，蚂蚁在分享它们的知识经验。人们不仅要问：我们同他们有什么区别？
You might think that human beings at least enjoy the advantage of being more generally intelligent. To test this idea, my colleagues and I recently administered an array of cognitive tests — the equivalent of nonverbal I.Q. tests — to adult chimpanzees and orangutans (two of our closest primate relatives) and to 2-year-old human children. As it turned out, the children were not more skillful overall. They performed about the same as the apes on the tests that measured how well they understood the physical world of space, quantities and causality. The children performed better only on tests that measured social skills: social learning, communicating and reading the intentions of others.
或许你认为人类至少可以因为他们所具有的更通用的智能而感到自豪。为了检验这一想法，我和我的同事进行了一系列的认知测试，（你可以把它想象成非文字版的IQ测试）来比较成年猩猩和两岁小孩之间的智力差别。结果显示两岁的小孩并不占有优势。他们在空间能力，数量规律，因果分析等方面的得分同猩猩基本相同。小孩仅在一项上占有明显优势－－社会化技巧。
But such social gifts make all the difference. Imagine a child born alone on a desert island and somehow magically kept alive. What would this child's cognitive skills look like as an adult — with no one to teach her, no one to imitate, no pre-existing tools, no spoken or written language? She would certainly possess basic skills for dealing with the physical world, but they would not be particularly impressive. She would not invent for herself English, or Arabic numerals, or metal knives, or money. These are the products of collective cognition; they were created by human beings, in effect, putting their heads together.
但这就是关键。设想一个小孩被遗弃在一个荒岛，并神奇的活了下来。当他成年的时候，他的认知能力会是怎样呢。没有人教，没有人来模仿，没有工具语言？当然他会发展一些技巧来应付周遭的环境，但显然并不会让我们印象深刻。他不会发明英语，阿拉伯数字，铁器或钱。这些都是集体智力的成果。
When you look at apes and children in situations requiring them to put their heads together, a subtle but significant difference emerges. We have observed that children, but not chimpanzees, expect and even demand that others who have committed themselves to a joint activity stay involved and not shirk their duties. When children want to opt out of an activity, they recognize the existence of an obligation to help the group — they know that they must, in their own way, "take leave" to make amends. Humans structure their collaborative actions with joint goals and shared commitments.
当小孩和猩猩碰到那些需要集体力量的问题时，显著的差别出现了。猩猩一般会逃避它们的责任，而小孩却不会。他们会识别出行为中隐含的责任。他们会有共同的目标并分享成果。
Another subtle but crucial difference can be seen in communication. The great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans — communicate almost exclusively for the purpose of getting others to do what they want. Human infants, in addition, gesture and talk in order to share information with others — they want to be helpful. They also share their emotions and attitudes freely — as when an infant points to a passing bird for its mother and squeals with glee. This unprompted sharing of information and attitudes can be seen as a forerunner of adult gossip, which ensures that members of a group can pool their knowledge and know who is or is not behaving cooperatively. The free sharing of information also creates the possibility of pedagogy — in which adults impart information by telling and showing, and children trust and use this information with confidence. Our nearest primate relatives do not teach and learn in this manner.
另一个关键因素是沟通。
Finally, human infants, but not chimpanzees, put their heads together in pretense. This seemingly useless play activity is in fact a first baby step toward the creation of distinctively human social institutions. In social institutions, participants typically endow someone or something with special powers and obligations; they create roles like president or teacher or wife. Presidents and teachers and wives operate with special powers and obligations because, and only because, we all believe and act as if they fill these roles and have these powers. Two young children pretending together that a stick is a horse have thus taken their first step on the road not just to Oz but also toward inhabiting human institutional reality.
最后一个因素在于小孩能够发挥集体的力量。
Human beings have evolved to coordinate complex activities, to gossip and to playact together. It is because they are adapted for such cultural activities — and not because of their cleverness as individuals — that human beings are able to do so many exceptionally complex and impressive things.
人类经过漫长的演化学会了在复杂问题上合作。他们如此这般不是因为个体有多么聪明，而是由于他们溶于自己的文化氛围，而这会产生很多的文明成果。
Of course, humans beings are not cooperating angels; they also put their heads together to do all kinds of heinous deeds. But such deeds are not usually done to those inside "the group." Recent evolutionary models have demonstrated what politicians have long known: the best way to get people to collaborate and to think like a group is to identify an enemy and charge that "they" threaten "us." The remarkable human capacity for cooperation thus seems to have evolved mainly for interactions within the group. Such group-mindedness is a major cause of strife and suffering in the world today. The solution — more easily said than done — is to find new ways to define the group.
当然，人类也并不是完美的集体性动物；他们也会做很多卑鄙的事情。但一般情况下这很少见。最近的演化论模型揭示了那些政治家们掌握得炉火纯情的技巧：让一群人合作的最好办法就是给他们找一个共同的敌人，让他们同仇敌忾。不过这就使得人类最值得称道的能力沦为团体内的较力。这也是目前很多问题的根源。解决办法说起来很容易，我们需要对团体重新定义。
Michael Tomasello is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
