Stranded explorers die without indigenous cultural knowledge.

Evidence

In fact, we have seen various versions of the human half of our Survivor experiment many times, as hapless European explorers have struggled to survive, stranded in seemingly hostile environments, from the Canadian Arctic to the Gulf Coast of Texas. As chapter 3 shows, these cases usually end in the same way: either the explorers all die, or some of them are rescued by a local indigenous population, which has comfort ably been living in this “hostile environment” for centuries or millennia. Thus, the reason why your team would lose to the monkeys is that your species—unlike all others—has evolved an addiction to culture. By “culture” I mean the large body of practices, techniques, heuristics, tools, motivations, values, and beliefs that we all acquire while growing up, mostly by learning from other people. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 43

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Cultural accumulation made individual ingenuity insufficient for survival.; Survival in extreme environments hinges on culturally accumulated knowledge, not individual capacity. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 107; Even skilled Europeans starved in environments where locals thrived without their knowledge — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 129 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Arctic survival turned on borrowing local cultural knowledge rather than novel invention #exemplifies (0.95) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 115
• Survival in extreme environments hinges on culturally accumulated knowledge, not individual capacity. #corroborates (0.93) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 107
• Even skilled Europeans starved in environments where locals thrived without their knowledge #exemplifies (0.92) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 129
• Cultural accumulation made individual ingenuity insufficient for survival. #expands (0.88)