Creativity: Both humans and some animals can be innovatory creative - necessity being the mother of invention - such as employing tool use to further their odds of survival. The classic example is some animals using twigs to pry out insects from inside trees for their lunch. It's snack time! Only humans however are artistically creative (with one possible exception - whale songs). We're all artistically creative even if it's just planning and cooking meals; deciding on furniture and its arrangement; ditto our wallpaper and/or paint schemes; our choice of carpets or tiles. Even writing a letter or an email is an artistic creation as is choosing ones wardrobe and hairstyle. Amateur photography is an artistic expression of course - an exercise in creativity. Animals do none of these things. And it's obvious from the archaeological and anthropological record that our ancestors were of the same mind - artistically creative, perhaps designed with a purpose in mind like making pottery to store food in or perhaps creating something for religious purposes. Quite often however an artistic artefact was created just for the hell of it, or because it pleased the person to do so. The Mona Lisa might be considered to be a nice artistic work (though you'd have to pay me to hang it in my home) but it's useless - just another dust collector. Okay, it might be useful dragging in a few tourist dollars, but 99.999% of all artistic creations just collect dust. Creating something with little hope of recognition is definitely a universal human trait.
Exploration: Many animals explore, but not for theoretical academic reasons. Their exploration has a practical purpose in mind - a new and better home possibly; a possible food source that lurks inside that unexplored cupboard. Humans explore too, and often equally for practical reasons - finding the Northwest Passage; seeking the exotic spices of the Orient by heading west from Europe but bumping into the Americas instead; looking for new lands to add to your nation's empire with a bit of personal glory tacked on as well. However, humans also explore just because they are curious and boldly go where no one has gone before just to satisfy that curiosity. Voyages to the Moon are at one extreme of that urge, but on another level, what's beyond that distant hill? As it was in the past, so it still is. If you move into a new neighbourhood or city what's just about the first thing you do? Explore and find out what's what and where's where. It's the personal version of bolding going where you haven't gone before.
Hybrid Creatures 1: Human-Animal Hybrids: Our universal mythologies are loaded with human-animal hybrids. You name the animal and no doubt you'll find either the body of that animal topped up with a human head & neck (sometimes including torso), or else the human body will be topped off with an animal's head and neck (sometimes including it's torso). You don't have to dig too deeply to find examples: the Sphinx, the Minotaur, the Centaur, the Satyr, the Mermaid, the Harpies, and the Sirens are all well known examples.
Hybrid Creatures 2: Animal-Animal Hybrids: Our universal mythologies are also loaded with animal-animal hybrids. There are combinations of two different animals; three different animals; sometimes four of more make up a composite hybrid. If you can imagine one; someone has beaten you to it and recorded it in one or more ancient mythology. While there are literally hundreds of examples from around the world, it's easy to name the commoner ones: the Dragon, the Griffin, even Pegasus the winged horse.
Politicians: Politicians by any other name (royalty, ministers, senators, emperors, congressmen, presidents, pharaohs, etc.) are still politicians, near universally viewed by the ruled as among the lowest of the low, whether elected to rule, rule by divine right, or rule by force. Politicians are probably in that category of you can't live without them; you can't live (much as you'd like to anyway) with them. At best we have to conclude that politicians have been, are, and will continue to be a necessary evil from any and all societies that have, are, or will exist.
Recreational Drugs: There's little doubt that recreational drug use (and probably abuse) dates back multi-thousands of years. The fermenting of gapes for wine and its use goes back at least from 8000 to 6000 BC, and was a very common drink in Ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome; the production and use of beer dates back even further to at least 9500 BC; smoking has been recorded from at least 5000 BC onwards, often as incense and for use in various religious/shamanistic rituals from the Middle East through to Asia and the Americas; and no doubt our ancient ancestors, via trial and error as to what was eatable and what wasn't tasty, no doubt discovered 'magic mushrooms' and other similar natural plant materials that not only provided a few calories but a bit of a buzz too! For example, opium use goes back to roughly 4200 BC. The list could be massively extended but you get the gist. Drug use is one of those human universals - always has been; probably always will be. And while some species of animals can be induced artificially into becoming addicted to say alcohol, a wild animal can not afford to become addicted to any substance in its environment and become disoriented. A mouse nibbling on a magic mushroom is just asking for trouble.
Shape-Shifters and Were-Creatures: Shape-shifters and were-creatures are very popular in sci-fi ("The Thing from another World" or "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country" and horror (those endless variations on the "Wolfman" classic). They are also popular in reality, if mythology be reality. Anytime within the field of mythology one comes across a theme which is universal, that is it cuts across all cultures, geographies, races, etc. then I believe one needs to pay extra heed, as universal themes are more likely to have some basis in reality. One such theme is that of the shape-shifter, including were-creatures. Almost every culture around the world has some type of transformation myth, and almost every commonly found animal (and some not-so-common ones) probably has had a shape-shifting myth attached to them somewhere along the line. With respect to humans, the most obvious explanation is that at some time or other we'd all like to have been an inconspicuous fly-on-the-ceiling observing and listening in to that which was not meant for our eyes and ears. Much as we'd like to at times, we can't shape-shift into a fly. But that doesn't really explain why we would attribute that ability to others - it doesn't do us personally any good, now does it? The popular idea of a shape-shifter is of a human (or humanoid) being who turns into something else, or something else that turns into something human (or humanoid) and common examples include skin-walkers, the werewolf and vampire (though humans have been attributed to transform into just about any mammal or bird you can think of). Other common shape-shifters include fairies, wizards, witches, kelpies, and some, even most of the gods (like Odin, Loki and Zeus). Satan would have to be included too. However, though we can't shape-shift (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde not withstanding), even though other humans can (or could), that ability has also been attributed to literally hundreds of creatures from time immemorial. There are numerous stories about animals that can transform themselves into other animal forms as well as the above mentioned human-animal transformations.
Social Animal: Hermits are relatively few and far between. We voluntarily associate in large clusters usually like-with-like. That sometimes resulting in ghettos and/or ethnic neighbourhoods (like Chinatowns) which usually wasn't quite the social issue in ancient history that it has tended to be in the latter three centuries. That the human species are a social animal is nowhere more dramatically brought to the fore than with the modern phenomena, something bordering a on pure obsession, of having to be in contact 24/7/52. People produce seemingly endless streams of emails; love the use of cams; blog the most trivial of trivia's; engage in so much text messaging that arthritis rates among the young are bound to skyrocket; engage in near endless mobile phone use; make posting after posting on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter (and similar sites), etc. We throw parties; dine together; attend all manner of functions with our peers, and on and on it goes. Such social activities aren't confined to any one sex or age group or nationality.
Sports: Contests, whether as harmless play, as a more formal and structured competition (be it amateur or professional) has been the case in all societies from the year dot through to the present day. The ancient Greeks had their Olympic Games; the Mesoamericans their ball-court contests where you just wouldn't want to be on the losing side; Americans have their national pastime (baseball); other countries/cultures go fanatically mad over all manner of other sports be it rugby or soccer or ice hockey. One doesn't even have to be a fan of or participate in team sports. Chess and wrestling just require one opponent; golf and tenpin bowling don't even require that. Sporting contests have to rate as one of the most universal of human universals ever.
Superstitions: This hardly requires any lengthy comment. From black cats, to walking under ladders, to Friday the 13th, to breaking mirrors, avoiding stepping on sidewalk cracks, to Charlie Brown suiting up for his baseball games in a just so manner, etc. Every culture has had (and often still has) endless superstitions and rituals to ward them off, which we might shrug off as harmless nonsense today but which we're not always taken with a proverbial grain of salt thrown over the shoulder. More than a few felines and women suffered the most horrible of tortures because of superstitions.
Taboos: Every society everywhere at every time has had some set of taboos - some of which made sense like incest (inbreeding is bad from a Darwinian evolutionary perspective), but many that didn't. For example, only the ancient Chinese emperor or empress was allowed to have the image of a dragon on their clothing; for everyone else that was taboo under penalty of death. Some foods are forbidden; some only forbidden or allowed on certain days - most illogical, unless for health reasons which usually wasn't or isn't the rational. And although all societies have or have had taboos, there's often little consistency between them, or even within them. Royal families often engaged in incest even while being taboo among the commoners. But some societies allowed, even encouraged polygamy while others tabooed the practice. Go figure!
Territoriality: Animals usually stake out and defend a certain amount of territory, that amount of space required to sustain itself, space enough to find a mate in, sufficient territory to sustain and raise a family in. Animals rarely require more than that. They don't grab territory just for the sake of grabbing territory and for bragging rights. Too large a space is indefensible anyway. You can only patrol so large a space with the resources at your command. Humans are obviously territorial. We defend our personal space. We're uncomfortable if someone we don't know gets within a certain distance of us. A man's home is his castle, and we don't care for trespassers. If foreign nations threaten or invade our country, we up the nationalistic fever and do our patriotic duty. And while the number of conflicts and wars have perhaps been given too much prominence in our history texts, it's fair to say that many a nation has invaded many another nation(s) in order to acquire and expand their own territory. That's usually for a practical purpose(s) - few go to war just for the hell of it. Often that reason(s) is obtaining required natural resources including human resources (slaves), or eliminating a potential threat before they eliminate you, or to provide more space for your expanding population to expand into. When it comes to expanding your territory, there are some less self-serving practical rationales with emphasis instead on more political, cultural, and/or religious reasons include unification - replacing say paganism with your brand of Christianity; communism vs. democracy.
Treasure: Quite apart from pirates and buried treasure, bank robbers and stashed loot, prospectors who keep losing the mother lode, or pharaoh's grave goods (you can take it with you they thought) all societies have their cultural treasures, often in part composed of precious metals, jewels, pearls, jade, ivory, etc. but not always. Treasure to an entire culture or to an archaeologist does not always mean gold doubloons and X marks the spot! When societies are threatened by outside forces, an all too frequent occurrence in human history, they often hide or move those movable valuables comprising those cultural treasures. In the turmoil that follows, sometimes documentation becomes lost or destroyed, the items, scattered in diverse locations, also become lost as the mists of time thicken - and so you have lost treasure. If cultural treasures are looted by invaders, the fate is often the same - scattered to the four winds - some ending up in private collections; others stored/buried away and ultimately forgotten about. Valued objects are also lost by accident. There a lot of valuable cultural artefacts lost at sea when ships were sunk and there's roughly three million shipwrecks worldwide; a lot of gold (and similar items) was lost in transport to the Old World from the New World including treasures of all sorts of interest only to archaeologists and historians. Some treasure ships (however you define them) have been uncovered and recorded; much more remains. The upshot is that there is an awful lot of treasure that remains unaccounted for, hidden, buried or just plain lost, and every culture can relate to that. But it's not just treasure that's universal in human civilizations. The whole concept of treasure is fascinating, even riveting to us as individuals, whether that treasure is modern or ancient; local or sited halfway around the world. And so it has been and probably forever will be.
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