 Theorists of culture see great significance in a distinction between mere culture, on one hand, and cumulative culture, on the other. The latter involves not just the spread of information between individuals via social transmission, but the wherewithal of later generations to retain, refine, add to, and innovate on the cultural repertoire they inherit from previous generations. Some have claimed that cumulative culture is distinctly human and evolutionarily unique (Sterelny 2009, Tomasello 2009) while others have suggested that rudimentary instances of cumulative culture can also be found in some non-human animals like whales (Whitehead &amp; Rendell 2015), Japanese monkeys (Schofield et al. 2018), and chimpanzees (Marshall-Pescini &amp; Whiten 2008). There is little controversy, however, about the claim that the scale and complexity of human culture outstrips anything found in other animals (Dean et al. 2014). While some have expressed doubts about whether the current evidence suffices to establish that most human cultural traits result from the accumulation of modifications over time (Vaesen &amp; Houkes 2021), most researchers hold that understanding our capacities for cumulative culture, perhaps more so than those that underlie individual intelligence, creativity, or problem solving, is crucial to understanding the distinctive character and success of the human species (Richerson &amp; Boyd 2005; Sterelny 2009, 2012; J. Henrich 2016; Derex &amp; Boyd 2015; R. Boyd 2017; cf. Pinker 2010).