Many animals use information made available to them by their conspecifics ; it is in that sense that they are said to possess culture. Humans are not unique in this respect ; but they put culture at exceptionally high stakes ; indeed, the greater part of our biological success on earth is directly due to culture. A flying squirrel occasionally uses his wings in a particularly difficult jump ; but this capacity is not fundamental to them : were squirrels to become fully terrestrial again, the transition would prove relatively easy. In contrast, albatros bet on flying their whole biological fate ; likewise, survival for a human being unable to receive and transmit mental representations would prove difficult. If, hypothetically, the possibility of cultural transmission happened to disappear, the evolutionary relevance of being human would perish alongside with it.

Cognitive Anthropology is concerned with two related questions : what is a human brain, so that it can apprehend culture ? what is culture, so that it can pass through a human brain ?

The first question is that of the neural basis of cultural transmission. Several neural mechanisms have been put forward as likely candidates (Mirror-Neurons, Theory of Mind, etc.) A very active research discloses new material every day, and this websites tries to relay it. Why and how do we learn, WHy do we accept other's testimony? WHy imitate what others invent? Why invent what others shall imitate? These questions are crucial in understanding the rise fo the cultural animal

By asking the second question, we consider that culture does not imprint itself on the brain as on a blank slate or, at least, that this imprinting obeys certain constraints. Even if the mind was indeed a blank slate, that is, if any cultural material was equally liable to be computed by the brain (which, though unlikely, is conceivable in view of human’s amazing cultural diversity), then the very fact of cultural transmission (memory, learning, imitation) would suffice to constraint the possible range of acquired representations. Anyway, we think that constraints on culture are much more numerous.

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