Multicellular development in a choanoflagellate

discriminate helpers from hinderers. These results clearly challenge the view that infants start out as egoists who have to be trained to become prosocial through systematic cultural intervention. Rather, they suggest that altruism and cooperation comes to humans naturally from the start. Evolution and human cognitive development Interestingly, virtually all of the amazing skills that human infants show in understanding their physical world are also displayed by non-human primates (Box 1). Some infants' skills for understanding their social world are shared with other primates as well, but at the end of the infancy period, at around two years of age, while infants still have almost identical skills as their primate cousins in their understanding of objects, space, causality, and so forth, they are clearly unique in their social-cognitive skills for engaging in social learning, communication, and collaboration with others. These social-cognitive skills represent a species-unique kind of 'cultural intelligence' that enables human children to acquire the skills and knowledge of those around them, and so to amplify their cognitive skills manyfold. Humans' most basic cognitive skills for understanding their physical and social worlds are thus clearly part of their evolutionary heritage, and the teaching, socialization, and language characteristic of human cultures then builds on this foundation to take human cognition to even greater heights.