The article by Dehaene and Cohen explores the cultural recycling hypothesis, which suggests that cultural inventions, such as reading and arithmetic, invade and inherit the structural constraints of evolutionarily older brain circuits. They argue that these cultural domains, despite being relatively recent, map onto reproducible locations within large-scale macromaps in the brain, such as the left occipito-temporal sulcus for reading and the bilateral intraparietal cortex for arithmetic. The authors propose that this paradoxical biological invariance of cultural maps can be explained by the neuronal recycling hypothesis, where cultural inventions rewire pre-existing brain circuits. They discuss the evidence for this hypothesis, including the cross-cultural consistency of cortical representations, the existence of morphogenetic and epigenetic precursors in nonhuman primates, and the progressive development of these representations during childhood. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the evolutionary origins of these cultural maps to predict the ease and speed of cultural acquisition and to identify potential cognitive trade-offs.The article by Dehaene and Cohen explores the cultural recycling hypothesis, which suggests that cultural inventions, such as reading and arithmetic, invade and inherit the structural constraints of evolutionarily older brain circuits. They argue that these cultural domains, despite being relatively recent, map onto reproducible locations within large-scale macromaps in the brain, such as the left occipito-temporal sulcus for reading and the bilateral intraparietal cortex for arithmetic. The authors propose that this paradoxical biological invariance of cultural maps can be explained by the neuronal recycling hypothesis, where cultural inventions rewire pre-existing brain circuits. They discuss the evidence for this hypothesis, including the cross-cultural consistency of cortical representations, the existence of morphogenetic and epigenetic precursors in nonhuman primates, and the progressive development of these representations during childhood. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the evolutionary origins of these cultural maps to predict the ease and speed of cultural acquisition and to identify potential cognitive trade-offs.