How to Make Cassava Safe

In the Amazon, where humans have eaten cassava for thousands of years, tribes have learned the many steps needed to detoxify it completely. Joseph Henrik says that cultural evolution is often much smarter than we are. We learn not by understanding from first principles, but by imitating. Tests reveal two and a half year old chimps and humans have similar mental capacities unless the challenge is to learn by copying someone. Human civilisation is based less on raw intelligence than on a highly developed ability to learn from each other.