DISTINCTIVELY HUMAN? MEANING‐MAKING AND WORLD SHAPING AS CORE PROCESSES OF THE HUMAN NICHE: with Eric Priest, Celia Deane‐Drummond, Joseph Henrich, and Mary Meyers, “Introduction to Symposium on ‘Just How Special Are Humans?’”; Eric Priest, “Human Uniqueness: Debates in Science and Theology”; Joseph Henrich, “How Culture Made Us Uniquely Human”; Agustín Fuentes, “Distinctively Human? Meaning‐Making and World Shaping as Core Processes of the Human Niche”; Cristine Legare, “The Cumulative Quality of Culture Explains Human Uniqueness”; David Reich, “Human Uniqueness from a Biological Poin

Part of the task in studying human evolution is developing a deep understanding of what we share, and do not share, with other life, as a mammal, a primate, a hominin, and as members of the genus Homo . A key aspect of this last facet is gained via the examination of the genus Homo across the Pleistocene. By at least the later Pleistocene members of the genus Homo began to habitually insert shared meaning into and onto their world forming one of the bases of contemporary human abilities to develop a distinctive human niche and human culture. Meaning‐laden cultural dynamics constitute the core of a ubiquitous semiotic ecosystem, which in turn structures the architecture of the complex niches and niche construction processes that characterize humanity today. Here, I offer a summary of Pleistocene evolution of the genus Homo and an argument for when and how that extensive and distinctive capacities for shared meaning‐making and a particularly dynamic niche construction emerged.