>no matter how hard you try, you can't entirely pin down which are core Yeah, there have been lots of guesses as to why humans are smart, haven't there, e.g. b

>no matter how hard you try, you can't entirely pin down which are core Yeah, there have been lots of guesses as to why humans are smart, haven't there, e.g. bipedalism, opposing thumbs, tool use, large brain, descended larynx. But the best guess so far IMO is that humans are optimised for meme transmission. For example, we can tell which way our mother is looking. This leads straightforwardly to language (words being memes which can be pronounced, as Daniel Dennett points out), and thence to culture. Which makes us super-smart. Animals don't seem to have reached cultural escape velocity yet.