Here's an excerpt from something I wrote several years back. Please see the grouping of words in capitals below for your answer to the things which are applicable at all times to all humans:
THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS.
Psychologists have told us that our brains are set up to detect patterns. This would be an example of an a priori human function. Nothing ground breaking ‘bout that, in fact we can see the primitive forms of this ability in animal life. Through the senses of sight, smell, hearing and taste, animals instinctually “group” the experiences that are salient to their basic everyday lives. Animals seem to be born with this hard wired, so they can't access or change it. In them, it is like READ ONLY MEMORY.
For us, the predisposition to recognize patterns and group objects, feelings and experiences takes on a much more complicated meaning. We understand the world through the patterns and groups we create – leading to an entire conceptual / grouping system. Now that system, I believe, is a posteriori. We acquire and form it as we learn and age, Don't we?. Therefore, being volitional and willfull creatures, one would think that we've transcended the ROM level of lesser animals, especially since our conceptual system is so complex and massive, almost limitless (getting us in trouble sometimes).
The big question then is how can it be that all of humanity develops almost the exact SAME conceptual system without willfully attempting to affect it as individuals? There are many different pattern perception opportunities and ways for us to assign meaning, yet one by one we all seem to perceive the same patterns and relative value behind our pattern recognition – as well as basic & prime concepts, leading to the same grouping system and conceptual system. This appears to transcend language and culture as well. It makes the whole thing look a priori!
Anna Wierzbicka has compiled a list of what she calls semantic primes, culled from 50 or so widely different languages. The implication is that they go way, way, back. Here they are:
I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOPLE
THIS, THE SAME, OTHER
ONE, TWO, SOME, MANY/MUCH, ALL
GOOD, BAD, BIG, SMALL
THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
SAY, WORD
DO, HAPPEN, MOVE, ALIVE
NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF
WHEN, NOW, AFTER, BEFORE, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME
WHERE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE
VERY, MORE
KIND OF, PART OF
LIKE
Now that alone is amazing, but it doesn’t stop there. As we continue to build our conceptual systems, there is very little splitting off. And any differences from person to person mostly deal with cultural and regional quirks.
I call this phenomenon the problem of universals...