---
description: Blackmore argues imitation (not tool use, language, or consciousness) is what made humans unique by launching memetic evolution
type: claim
domain: cultural-dynamics
created: 2026-02-16
source: "Blackmore, The Meme Machine (1999)"
confidence: likely
tradition: "memetics, evolutionary theory, cultural evolution"
---

Blackmore's central thesis is that what makes humans fundamentally different from all other species is not intelligence, language, or consciousness but the capacity for true imitation. Most animals can learn through conditioning and trial-and-error, and some engage in social learning where the presence of others influences what they learn. But true imitation -- accurately copying a complex behavior by observing another perform it -- is extraordinarily rare in the animal kingdom. Humans do it so effortlessly that we fail to notice how remarkable it is.

The significance of true imitation is that it creates a second replicator. When one organism copies a behavior from another, something is transmitted -- an instruction, a skill, a pattern -- that can then be copied again and again, taking on "a life of its own." This transmitted unit is the meme. Unlike social learning, which modifies individual behavior without creating a new line of replication, true imitation launches a parallel evolutionary process with its own selection pressures, its own competition for limited resources (attention, memory, communication bandwidth), and its own cumulative design.

The threshold nature of this capacity matters for understanding [[emergence is the fundamental pattern of intelligence from ant colonies to brains to civilizations]]. Below the imitation threshold, cultural transmission is weak and non-cumulative -- each generation must rediscover innovations. Above it, innovations accumulate across generations, building on each other in ways that [[cultural evolution decoupled from biological evolution and now outpaces it by orders of magnitude]]. The threshold also explains why imitation apparently evolved only once: the preconditions (good motor control, Machiavellian social intelligence, the ability to take another's perspective) were available in many primates, but crossing the threshold required all of them simultaneously. Once crossed, memetic selection immediately began reshaping the environment in which genes were selected, making the transition irreversible.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[humans are the minimum viable intelligence for cultural evolution not the pinnacle of cognition]] -- Blackmore's imitation thesis complements this by specifying the mechanism: minimum viable imitation capacity, not general intelligence, is what launched cultural evolution
- [[cultural evolution decoupled from biological evolution and now outpaces it by orders of magnitude]] -- imitation is the specific capacity that created the decoupling
- [[emergence is the fundamental pattern of intelligence from ant colonies to brains to civilizations]] -- imitation creates the conditions for memetic emergence by enabling cumulative cultural selection
- [[memes drove human brain expansion through coevolutionary pressure because better imitators were sexually selected and their larger brains spread more memes]] -- once the imitation threshold was crossed, memetic selection pressure drove the rapid tripling of brain size
- [[true imitation is the uniquely human capacity that created a second replicator because most animal social learning does not copy the form of behavior]] -- source-faithful treatment of Blackmore's central thesis distinguishing true imitation from all other social learning

Topics:
- [[livingip overview]]