Is our culture "open ended"

https://phys.org/news/2024-11-evolutionary-anthropologist-hypothesis-humans-dominating.html
Some researchers are speculating on why humans dominate our habitat. Other species develop culture, but what makes us different.
Our brains have a lot to do with what culture we develop and how that culture can develop.  These researchers think that it is our ability to understand an infinite number of possibilities that allows this, but if you look around, understanding has little to do with what we are.  There is even a resistance to understanding reality.  What humans are able to do is create culture in real time, and we have been able to build on what has been successful.  Just think of when Star Trek communicators were science fiction, and now just about everyone not only uses a cell phone, but it has become an essential part of many of our lives.  Our hunter gatherer ancestors had this ability, but they lacked the technological innovations to benefit from it as much as we do today. Modern humans went through a severe genetic bottle neck, probably, within the last half million years.  The time of the bottle neck keeps getting pushed back from around a 100,000 years ago to probably over 200,000 years ago, but Humans have around 1/5 the standing genetic variation in our population as most other species.  Chimps as decimated as their populations are still have around 3 times the standing genetic variation as we modern humans.  Estimates are that our population may have gone down to a population size of around 1,000 individuals at some point.  The further back in time this bottleneck gets pushed back into time the fewer survivors would be needed to produce the existing genetic variation.  This was either a speciation event or we nearly went extinct.  So our cultural mastery may not have helped us much before we had developed better technology than beginner rock breakers.
Neanderthals and Denisovans may have been just as culturally adept as we are, but they were never able to over populate ice age Europe and Asia. They were pretty much stuck at the same population levels as modern humans may have had in Africa.  They also suffered a genetic bottle neck, and it may have been the same environmental calamity that may have caused the bottle neck in Africa.  Neanderthals are estimated to have had just about the same amount of genetic variation as modern humans, but that isn't saying very much when you think of how deficient modern humans are.
Ron Okimoto