Communication as a tool for invention: Neanderthals' limitation

At some stage in their life, a child might cry out to their parents, "Everyone has that, so I want it too!" Have you ever thought of the definition of "everyone?" There was some research mentioning: if you have three or more people agreeing with each other, you'd start to use the phrase "everyone says." By insisting on "everyone," the child would seek sympathy from the parents and eventually would get what they wanted.

They say, three people is the beginning of a society. A single person does not need to communicate. Two people can sometimes communicate non-verbally. However, when it comes to three, communication starts to take a significant role. The three might split up into two, uneven sizes; two against one and social dynamics start. So, communication is a fundamental component of societies.

A family is a group of three or more, so it can be considered a primitive society. However, societies have much more complicated dynamics compared to simple families. So, what is the difference between families and societies?

Recent advancement of DNA analysis has allowed us to understand the composition of DNA from bones, and there have been a lot of discoveries in how we, Homo sapiens, evolved over time. According to the latest understanding, the biggest rival we had 50,000 years ago was Neanderthals. Neanderthals were not only physically stronger than Homo sapiens, but their average brain size was also 10% larger than ours. Both species' stone tools and art were almost equivalent in complexity 50,000 years ago.

The significant difference was the size of groups we formed. Neanderthals formed family-based groups with a maximum of approximately 15 members. On the other hand, Homo sapiens formed society-based groups of about 150 members, and as time went by, the size increased to several thousands. The significance was observed in the evolution of tools and art; there was almost no advancement observed in theirs, but ours had advanced significantly. Families were not effective enough in sharing inventions, whereas societies were. Neanderthals became extinct and lost the survival game because of the little advancement they had achieved in their tools.

This indicates that communication and sharing are the fundamental strengths of our species. We have been sharing our inventions, thus as a whole, have been able to take advantage of each invention. Propagation has been possible through communication. The same applies to companies. We need to share inventions and findings among each other within our organization using good communication skills, not snarling at each other. Cultural diversity is a way to share different kinds of ideas leading to inventions and findings taking advantage of different perspectives. Communication among different parties would increase the probability of success. However, it requires to learn some non-native languages. Thus, learning different languages is important for our survival!