Question: what makes us human

Karen answered on 11 Nov 2016:

Hi Jessica. This is an excellent question and I’ve had to do a bit of research to come up with an answer.
There are 3 things that define as human when compared to chimpanzees, they are; the use of symbolic behaviour, culture and language. Symbolic behaviour refers to the rituals and structures that humans adhere to, such as assigning specific roles to people ( the boss, the teacher etc), the way we dress for specific occasions and communicate both verbally and non verbally. Culture orefers to the way different populations have different ways of behaving based on their specific culture, Irish people will have a different way of doing things to Chinese people for example. And of course language speaks (no pun intended!) for itself.
I hope this helps. There are an awful lot of anthropological papers about this topic and it’s quite a complicated subject…so great challenging question ?