2  An example of cultural learning  How have we made such progress? Through a constant learning process: through scientific findings, societal debates, changes to institutions and norms, and the reassessment of existing knowledge and traditional procedures that this brings about. It’s not just individuals who learn; societies also learn and improve over generations.
Often, this “cultural knowledge” is not immediately apparent or comprehensible to an individual – but, as a whole, it moves us forward. Joseph Henrich describes one example of this cultural learning phenomenon – the preparation of foodstuffs (Henrich 2016). Many foods are poisonous or at least damaging to the health in an unprocessed state. This is true of manioc, or yuca, for example.