Humankind is capable of great accomplishments, such as sending probes into space and eradicating diseases; these achievements have been made possible because humans learn from their elders and enrich this knowledge over generations. It was previously thought that this cumulative aspect of culture — whereby small changes build up, are transmitted, used and enriched by others — was limited to humans, but it has now been observed in another primate, the baboon.

While it is clear that monkeys like chimpanzees learn many things from their peers, each individual seems to start learning from scratch. In contrast, humans use techniques that evolve and improve from one generation to the next, and also differ from one population to another. The origin of cumulative culture in humans has therefore remained a mystery to scientists, who are trying to identify the necessary conditions for this cultural accumulation.

Specifically, secondary schools across Northern Ireland are being given copies of MinecraftEdu, a version of the game designed to be educational.  This initiative is expected to bring Minecraft to 50,000 kids, and will be used to teach everything from art to history and computer coding:

Last week we worked with Artichoke and The Space to recreate, in Minecraft, a version of Burning Man artist David Best’s ‘Temple’ in Minecraft.

The real world Temple was a 70ft structure in the city that was ceremonially burnt. When we took it into the schools we were able to give young people a chance to create their own versions of the Temple, working alongside the artist. We’ve seen Minecraft being used to teach everything from coding to physics but I think that there’s a real opportunity to develop more of these kind of creative projects too.