Ancient humans evolved to be better teachers as technology advanced

As our ancestors developed more advanced tools and cultural practices, they also developed new ways of explaining concepts to others – culminating in the emergence of complex language

By Michael Marshall

5 June 2025

As technology progressed, humans also got better at passing on skills to others

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An analysis of more than 3 million years of human evolution shows that communication and technology developed in lockstep. As ancient humans came up with more advanced stone tools and other technologies, they also improved their communication and teaching skills, in order to pass their newfound abilities onto the next generation – and this enabled more technological progress.

“We have a scenario for the evolution of the mode of cultural transmission in human evolution,” says Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France. “It appears to be a co-evolution, between the complexity of the cultural trait and the complexity in the mode of cultural transmission.”

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Before the Stone Age: Were the first tools made from plants not rocks?

One distinctive feature of humans is that we have developed increasingly complex tools and behaviours. For instance, ancient humans created sharp stones that could be used for stabbing and cutting, then attached them to wooden sticks to create spears – a technique known as hafting.

Crucially, we can tell other people how to perform these behaviours. In the most complex cases, like playing the violin or programming a computer, this can involve years of teaching and practice. But in the distant past we weren’t as good at passing on information – especially before complex language arose.

With Ivan Colagè at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, Italy, d’Errico set out to track how our ability to transmit cultural information has developed over the past 3.3 million years, alongside our changing behaviours and technologies. They tracked 103 cultural traits, including specific types of stone tool, ornaments such as beads, pigments and mortuary practices such as burials and building cairns. They identified when each trait first appeared regularly in the archaeological record, suggesting it was common practice.