What is Culture?

I have come to learn that there are many different definitions and aspects of culture. Culture is an interesting term, because there is no one definite answer as to exactly what it is. Richerson & Boyd, 2005 say that culture consists of two different things, information and groups of individuals. The information in culture includes any idea, belief, technology, habit, or practice that is acquired through learning from others, and the groups of individuals being people who exist in a shared context. So my next question is, how and why is culture unique to humans? I do believe that non-human primates can posses some forms of culture, however their cultural behaviors are not proven strong enough to insist they are cultural beings. One thing I found interesting was the difference between imitative and emulative learning. Imitative learning is defined as a type of learning where the learner internalizes anothers goals and behavioral strategies in trying to mimic this (Tomasello et al., 1993). While emulative learning is when the learner focuses on the environmental events involved instead of the task itself. An emulative learner focuses on the events, rather than what is trying to be accomplished. It was found in many studies that children show imitative learning while non-human primates show emulative learning. The key difference that stood out to me and made the most sense in answering my questions; what is culture and how is it unique to humans was that-- although emulative learning is effective and no less intelligent than imitative, it does not allow for cultural information to build up. The accumulation of culture to me is what helps the culture continue to grow, and change for the better, to enable a culture to continue to thrive.