Infrastructure 20110417

Both Bernard Chapais and Kim R. Hill in the March 2011 issue of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science Magazine speak to kinship relationships and deep social structure as being the root of what it is to be human. Hill et al. hypothesize in their article that humans' kinship arrangements and the resulting large social networks led to the social learning that resulted in cumulative culture. As Hill explained succinctly on CBC's radio show, Quirks and Quarks, no one human could build a space shuttle on their own, but many humans collaborating and contributing each in their small way led to the space shuttle's development. Is kinship and maintenance of familial relationships a core infrastructure?