What best explains the ratchet effect is a lot of imitation and a little bit of innovation.

The ability to teach arises spontaneously at an early age without any apparent instruction and it is common to all human cultures.

Creativity is a consequence of expertise rather than expertise being a hindrance to creativity. To produce something novel and useful it is necessary first to master the previous knowledge in the domain.

Researchers discovered that, in a rapidly changing environment, copying the effective behaviors of knowledgeable others could be a much more effective learning strategy than learning directly from the environment.