Check out this research by Mark Nielsen and Keyan Tomaselli.
Children learn a great deal by imitating adults. A new study of Australian preschoolers and Kalahari Bushman children finds that a particular kind of imitation -- overimitation, in which a child copies everything an adult shows them, not just the steps that lead to some outcome -- appears to be a universal human activity, rather than something the children of middle-class parents pick up. The work helps shed light on how humans develop and transmit culture.
This research highlights the copycat abilities of humans. We as a species
seems to be coded for copying behaviours. Might this be the crucial differences between us and other primates that acts as the starting basis for a memetic evolution? Maybe we have by evolutionary accident acquired a strong ability to copy behaviour
blindly. The copying leads to a spread of learned behaviours stored within a brain to other brains. Useful behaviour are maintained, and other discarded. Some individuals might glue two behaviours into a new behaviour which is imitated again. Over ten thousands of years, imitation is genetically selected for, and so is gluing behaviour together. This might explain the emergence of language. And so on...
