Imagination

I wish I could paint...or draw. That'd be fun :)

What makes us human?
No, this wasn't a question presented in one of my philosophy classes today--we were talking about utilitarianism and the divine command theory. It was actually my linguistics class that got me to thinking about this question. In said linguistics class, we've spent much of our first days solidifying the idea that only humans have language. Sure, animals have means of communication but linguists on a whole don't consider that and language to be the same thing.
I think one plausible answer is that it is our imagination that makes us human, our ability to create new and diverse ideas. We've progressed so far from cave drawing to blank canvasses (still don't totally understand how that's art but, hey, to each his own); we've moved from men being entirely superior to women being less inferior (let's be real, sexism is far from resolved); we've made intentions to clear racism from the world (again, still a work in progress); and we invented the car (and are struggling to come up with ways to reduce the negative effects cars have on our environment.)
And none of those things could've happened unless someone had imagined them first. Someone had to have a crazy dream about it, wake up in the middle of the night and think "Hey, it'd be a really great world to live in if things were like this." (Okay, so maybe they spent lots of hours theorizing about it but the point stands.)
Imagination is crucial to us being human.