Chapter four of Laland today (in fairness it was alongside a bunch of other stuff... But also in fairness I read it enthusiastically and could have carried on but chose to play a game instead) and had another random thought.
Self awareness.
It's been in my mind for a week or so now for reasons unrelated to this project and I wondered (as occasionally I do) if non human animals might be self aware.
For the first time ever, I'm pretty confident the answer is no.
This answer is based somewhat on the assumption that some of my previous ideas are right, but it boils down to this: self awareness enables us to critically assess our behaviour.
But what's the point of that? And why couldn't other species need it?
It's the flip side of empathy.
This is kind of my answer to all the questions I've come up with in this thread, and I feel it's currently incomplete. But if empathy is indeed key to community building - fairness on behalf of others means you can build trust to a degree not usually found in competitive breeding species - then it's not enough to just "give a shit" as it were. One must also tailor ones actions to be appropriate to the situation.
Culture will build from there very quickly (providing the rules and standards that makes it easy to interpret behaviours), but the initial impulse to care and self correct has to be internal.
So now I have that question hanging over me... I really need to get back to the original one and work on that some more.