The Meme Machine

76 THE MEME MACHINE
The connection between advanced social skills (or Machiavellian Intelligence)
and imitation is this. To indulge in deception, pretence and social manipulation
you need to be able to put yourself in another’s shoes; to take the other’s point
of view; to imagine what it would be like to be that other. This is precisely what
you need to be able to imitate someone else. In both cases you must be able to
transform what you see someone else doing into what you would have to do to
achieve the same end, and vice versa. Finally, our ancestors used reciprocal
altruism, that is, helping others who will later help you in return. As we shall
see (Chapter 12), a common strategy in reciprocation is to copy what the other
person does; cooperating if they cooperate and refusing if they do not. With all
these prior skills imitation is not such a huge leap for evolution to make.
I suggest that the social skills others have singled out as directly responsible
for our large brain were in fact responsible for the prior step of acquiring
imitation. As soon as our ancestors crossed the threshold into true imitation a
second replicator was unwittingly unleashed. Only then did the memetic
pressure for increasing brain size begin.
When was this turning point? The first signs of obvious imitation are the
stone tools made by Homo habilis 2.5 million years ago. We modern people are
not natural stone flakers, and experiments trying to find out how it was
originally done have shown that making stone tools is a fine art and not easily
learned by trial and error. Almost certainly the skill of making stone tools
spread through early peoples by imitation. This certainty is much increased in
the later archaeological record which shows styles of tools, pots, jewellery and
other cultural artefacts spreading through different cultures at different times.
Imitation could have begun earlier. Perhaps people imitated ways of making
baskets, wooden scrapers or knives, baby slings, or other useful artefacts that
would not have survived the way stone tools do. So let us imagine a very early
culture of H. habilis, using simple stone tools to cut up and skin game or shape
wood, and inventing and copying a few other simple artefacts.
As the new skills begin to spread it becomes more and more important to be
able to acquire them. And how do you acquire them? – by imitation of course.
Thus, being a good imitator becomes increasingly important. Not only that, but
it becomes important to imitate the right people and the right things. In such
decisions we would expect simple heuristics, or rules of thumb, to be used.
‘Imitate the most successful people’ might be one; but now there are memes this
does not just mean imitating those with the most food or the strongest muscles, it
means imitating the people who have the most impressive tools, the brightest
clothes, or the newest skills. What this amounts to is ‘imitate the best imitator’.