With the emergence of human culture and the cultural ability of modern humans, something new and unprecedented is emerging.

Why does culture develop? The mind? What are the reasons? What is the cause for this innovation that will fundamentally change the world of the human species? How did the brain become the basis of the human mind through a functional change?

The second question: What is new? How can we specifically describe the new issues that arise? In his review of Tomasello’s book The Origins of Human Communication, Jürgen Habermas writes:

After the increases in size of the human brain had stopped, cultural learning processes replaced genetic adaptation. What other animal species lack is the transfer of symbolically stored knowledge from generation to generation, such that it can be revised and expanded in the light of new experiences.
(Jürgen Habermas 2009; Es beginnt mit dem Zeigefinger, in: DIE ZEIT No. 51/2009 of 10 December 2009, p. 45)

Therefore, what is new are cultural adaptations to the environment, which are no longer passed on through genetic inheritance but through cultural learning. Tomasello himself has characterised the new biologically inherited capacity for a cultural way of life

as the ability to understand the other members of the same species as intentional and intellectually gifted actors (p. 74)

From my perspective, a new stage of existence has been reached with culture; with the spirit. The human mind and culture cannot be described with biological theories.

This new stage of existence is associated with emergent characteristics that not only bring about the cultural transmission of knowledge and intentional understanding but also new forms of cooperation, common thinking and working.