Chapter 2.a
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
Let’s reflect together; if we think of the times when we were at school, we’ll remember that history books were a succession of wars and sovereigns, but also customs, beliefs and technical progress, scientific and economic interests.
The existence of biological evolution and the discovery of the mechanisms that regulate it were discovered very recently; cultural evolution instead is known to historians from many centuries. The phenomenon of cultural evolution has also strongly manifested to everybody during the twentieth century: throughout their lives, the latest generations have been able to observe significant cultural changes like, just to mention a few of them, dissemination of public education and the consequent decline of illiteracy, the advent of democracies at the expense of monarchies and dictatorships, the emancipation of women and universal suffrage, the diffusion of radio, cars, television, computers and mobile phones.
Each of us is aware of cultural evolution, but it is not also known that it follows laws similar to those of biological evolution. For understanding how the development of culture has happened as an integration of genetic heritage, and therefore that cultural evolution too is subject to natural selection, it is good to analyze in depth the similarities between the physical and cultural characteristics.
2.a.1 – Does culture depend on natural selection?
Does culture depend on natural selection?
Everyone knows that some individual physical characteristics are inherited by the offspring. This phenomenon is due to those microscopic material elements, called genes, which are transmitted from parents to children.
Similarly, certain behaviors, such as the use of simple tools by some animals, are taught from parents to children becoming one of their features. These cultural elements are transmitted from generation to generation and may affect the reproductive success of next generation exactly as genes do.
Similarly to genes also the cultural elements, that are beneficial in a particular environment, increasingly spread in the population to become a common feature. It follows then that the cultural elements are subject to natural selection just as physical characteristics and this analogy is so close to define the components of cultural heritage as cultural genes.
ROYAL BOX
EDWARD OSBORNE WILSON 
2.a.2 – Culture is an individual or collective heritage?
Culture is an individual or collective heritage?
The culture of an individual as a whole is unique and, as such, is therefore comparable to the genetic heritage of the same. Two human beings, although brothers, may not have inherited the same genetic sequence and similarly can’t have exactly the same knowledge, beliefs, traditions, etc.…
As the genetic heritage, also culture is clearly an individual heritage.
If we do not consider the genetic heritage as a whole, but examine a partial sequence of it, we will identify a high number of individuals who possess this sequence: in this case we speak of collective heritage, common to a family or a particular local population (e.g. the many stretches of similarity between cousins or the case of a whole almond-eyed population).
If we consider ever smaller parts, until we get to a single gene, we’d probably discover that this is a gene shared by all humanity and even by other species. It is necessary to know that over 90% of human genes is common to all great apes.
Likewise, the cultural heritage can be divided into small parts as well, and the smaller is the considered part, the greater is the population that shares it (think of the profession of a given religion and of the habit of wearing trousers).
Therefore, if it is true that each of us has unique cultural characteristics, we must also recognize that a significant part of our cultural heritage is collective.
THE FAMOUS CASE
DANTE ALIGHIERI
2.a.3 – How does culture help to survive?
How does culture help to survive?
Normally the puppies learn many things from their parents, such as how to search food, how to take it, how to behave with their own kind, etc.., we human beings have a similar behavior with our children, to whom we teach to speak, the relations structure and how to gain their independence.
It was noted that cats, like lions, teach their puppies hunting techniques in progressive stages: when they are very young, their parents slaughter the prey for them; then they no longer do so, letting them do it on their own; then they bring the prey still alive, although seriously injured, in order to teach how to bite to kill and, when finally reaching the right age, the parents take the young felines to hunting with them as observers; after this stage, the puppies, now grown, are ready to learn to obtain food in complete autonomy.
The animals therefore not merely teach their children useful things but they are able to do it with a rather complex internship. Hunting is not a simple thing: chase, attack and kill are all complex activities and expecting that the puppies learn everything on their own means exposing them to the risk of dying from hunger. The predators who do it are forced to make many more children in order not extinct.
The young cats bred in captivity show an inclination innate to chase, fight and bite, but they must work a lot on these activities to combine the best and execute them effectively. What is defined hunting instinct is actually a complicated combination of several different instincts (chase, fight, bite, eating), individual learning (due to past experience) and cultural learning (transferred from parents). The role of culture is therefore clear in the animal world: it helps personal learning and instinct.
As the various organs of the body cooperate with each other to carry out physiological activities, so instinct, experience and culture contribute together to form the behavior suited to survival.
To understand if in the animal world a particular course of action is an instinct or was culturally learned, scholars sometimes use to separate the pups from their parents and from any other similar to their birth, taking care of them personally; in this way puppies will not have a way to learn the culture typical of their species and present only instinctive attitudes or learnt from experience. The results of these experiments were surprising: for example, it was discovered that the nightingales grown in this way, instinctively sing, but in very different ways from their kin living in freedom; every nightingale species has a characteristic way of singing that is therefore learned culturally, while the tendency to sing is innate. As the hunting of lions, the song of nightingales is the result of collaboration between instinct and culture.
The complicity between genetic and cultural heritage goes further, however: it is clear that the nightingales could not sing without a voice apparatus genetically evolved for this purpose and the same can be said of human language. To this point, it is important to note that these organs are so important and specialized that may not have evolved in this form either before or after the appearance of singing or language, as earlier they would have been unnecessary, and it is impossible they have developed later in the functions that depend on them. Language and vocal apparatus must therefore have evolved together, mutation after mutation, influencing and perfectly interacting with each other.
Similar experiments with monkeys have shown that their way to communicate, to manage social relationships and to take care of offspring presents a very strong cultural component; grown in isolation, they would refuse to join a flock, to mate and take care of offspring. More accurate experiments have showed both in monkeys and in humans, social and sexual behavior have not only a genetic but also a cultural source.
In the animal world, genetics and cultural evolution therefore are not only similar but also inextricably linked, so that seeking to distinguish them can be misleading. This also applies to humans, but not always: there are cases, as we will see, in which it is essential to consider the two evolutionary types separately, for a proper examination of the phenomenon.
ROYAL BOX
ANTONIO MEUCCI
2.a.4 – What is the true purpose of biological evolution?
What is the true purpose of biological evolution?
By examining the mechanism of natural selection, it can be seen how the environment favors those genes that can be more easily transmitted. For genes, to be transmitted means to duplicate and spread throughout the population.
Genes do not independently reproduce by each other, but all together during duplication of the DNA molecule. To promote their dissemination, they must therefore facilitate the multiplication of DNA where they are inserted; this is a sort of teamwork in which players must win the game of reproduction competition with other teams. Each team consists of players specialized in its role and almost all teams have the same players for different roles, which occurs precisely because the genes that are more suited to play a particular role are those longer able to duplicate and spread, i.e. the most popular players on the market of natural selection, those who win the championship and will be promoted to future generations. These are very numerous teams, composed of thousands of genes, in which there are subgroups with specific roles. To build a complex organ as an eye, it is necessary the association of many different elements, i.e. the collaboration of many genes.
Winning the game means to produce offspring, win competitors means instead be present in as many teams possible to cover its role. In any case, to overcome natural selection are individual genes or groups of them, not all the team, which is slightly modified to every game, thanks to sex intercross. All the players common to all teams are the genetic heritage of species, the remaining part is the species internal genetic diversity, which adds to the common heritage increasing the adaptability and then the survival of other players in future generations. The selection naturally tends to form the best team to play on a specific field, which is the ecological niche.
Underlying all this, there is then the survival of individual genes and not of the offspring; this is confirmed by the observation of populations of animals such as the bees. The worker bees are in fact the specialized populations within their communities, that is called beehive; they are all sterile, not ever reproduce and yet not cease to exist: their genetic heritage does not disappears. The new generations of bees, as we all know, are generated by the queen bee who carries out the function of reproduction organ for the whole hive, which in turn is a kind of body where the workers bees play the role of cells. The genetic heritage of bees, as well as that of our cell, is handed down even without the direct descent and that means that then it is only one of the possible ways to achieve the survival of genes.
If the genes of an individual are handed down to their direct descendants, survival is equivalent to the survival of offspring; the case is far more common, but not the only one: all species of ants and bees use an alternative system.
It is worthwhile to emphasize that the survival of offspring is therefore subordinated to that of genes.
Similarly, we can say that the survival of the individual is at its turn subject to the survival of offspring; any mutation that helps the ability of individuals to live without increasing its reproductive success, will not have Indeed way of spreading. The individual must live enough to generate an adequate number of descendants and to make them independent, it is exactly what happens in the animal world, natural selection does not require anything more.
According to the logic of natural selection, we living beings are therefore just more complex machines for the conservation, transportation and duplication of genes. This logic also justifies the generation of new species or varieties, since the greater is the evolutionary success of the original species, the greater will be the number of species that derive from it and the lower the probability that the common genetic heritage disappears. The chimpanzees share about 98% of genes with human beings; if they should happen to extinguish, 98% of their genes would survive thanks to the human beings (and vice versa …).
The real purpose of biological evolution is the survival of selected genes, while the survival of the individual, of the descendants and even of the species are secondary phenomena and not always necessary.
This vision of human nature, subordinated to the survival of genes, is certainly contrary to our vanity, that leads us to consider ourselves as the highest expression of creation to which all other forms of life must submit; however, nothing obliges human expectations to coincide with those of natural selection: even the legitimate aspiration of man to protect his individual survival is based on natural instincts and we must be aware that nature not always works for our own good: we all know that old age, diseases and predators always existed and that we all always do our upmost to defend ourselves from these natural evils, considering this as something also natural.
Understanding what is the purpose of biological evolution should not therefore depress man in the new awareness of its role in nature but rather must be an important lesson in humility that incentives him to work with all his forces to focus first and then pursue all those objectives that are necessary to live and to live better as an individual, as descendant and as a species, celebrating what the biological nature considers secondary. Human beings should draw inspiration from behavior of genes and decide to play with the same team, with more synergy and, accordingly, with greater speed in achieving those objectives.
ROYAL BOX
RICHARD DAWKINS
2.a.5 – What is the purpose of a greater complexity of the species?
What is the purpose of a greater complexity of the species?
While accepting that the purpose of biological evolution is the survival of genes and that the spreading of these in many different species represents a strategy to achieve that end, we may ask why this trend has led to forms of life not only different but increasingly complex. The answer can be found using again the metaphor of the teams championship: when teams are balanced but always in competition, they will seek to develop new strategies to beat the competition. Sooner or later a team will develop a new technique of play, more choral, faster, more imaginative, however often more complex; if this technique will be successful, soon will spread into other teams to re-establish the balance; it will be then necessary to develop further and more complex techniques that will encourage competitors to do likewise and so forth. The teams that fail to recover the disadvantage are destined to disappear or to survive in another league to play with teams having their same level but in an interdependent system between all levels. It is therefore competition that moves the mechanism of evolution from bacteria to humans, leading to the synergy between all living species.
FURTHER INFO
METAPHOR
ROYAL BOX
JOSEPH SCHUMPETER
2.a.6 – Culture always favors survival?
Culture always favors survival?
We have said that culture was born as integration of genetic heritage and that it is subject to natural selection too; considering that, for natural selection, survival of the individual, of descendants and of the species have minor importance compared to that of genes: it would be the same for cultural genes.
The above leads us to reverse the normal concept of culture as an instrument for our lives and yet, even in this case, the important thing is to know that not always culture, as selected by nature, works for our good because in that way we could adequately defend ourselves.
Let’s see now how culture evolves in human society considering a borderline case: in some religious traditions, priests make a vow of chastity that prevent them from reproducing and yet they do not cease to exist. For millennia special schools form new generations of priests who are not the genetic descendants of earlier, but that are their cultural descendants; the new priests are born as such thanks to the teachings received by their professors, who play a role similar to that of the queen bee, i.e. that of organ for the reproduction, in this case cultural, giving rise to a new generation of priests; the latter in turn will not reproduce, just like workers bees, but some of them will cover the role of new teachers who will ensure the future of the category.
This phenomenon is not restricted to priests only: today it is extended to almost all categories of complex human society, so that every year schools and universities form new generations of professionals. For example, doctors often are not children of other doctors and at the same time, not making a vow of chastity, have children who in turn will choose the trade they will prefer. The same can be said of accountants, policemen and any other professional category.
Turning from the animal world to that of human society, we are therefore obliged to distinguish between genetics descendants and cultural descendants as they often do not coincide.
In the animal world, the two forms of offspring almost always coincide and therefore genes and culture complement each other: natural selection rewards genetic reproductive success and this success allows to hand down the family culture, such as various techniques of hunting; culture handed down in turn facilitates a new breeding and so on in perfect harmony.
It is then possible to conclude that in the animal world the cultural components play the same game and in the same team of genetic components: they produce the same offspring that will be accordingly selected to perfectly integrate. Since both components have always the same aim, together they will always support in a consistent manner survival of both the individual and the species.
In the case of man, when the genetic offspring is different from the cultural descendants, synergy can fail: for example, an increase in fertility of Engineers could not support technological progress and in turn an increase in technology might not encourages the fertility of engineers. These banalities, while undoubtedly laughable, must make us reflect on how, in human society, the cultural components may break the original ties with the genetic ones and have other purposes; one can even come to a stark contrast between the two reproductive needs, as in the case of priests whose cultural tradition requires the blocking of genetic reproduction.
ROYAL BOX
MARGARET MEAD
2.a.7 – The spreading speed of culture affects its relation with survival?
The spreading speed of culture affects its relation with survival?
When the culture is not passed along the line of family descent, but freely spreads in the community, the natural selection of culture will encourage the proliferation of single cultural descendants, which is independent from the genetics descendants; also, depending on the speed of culture dissemination, the bond with physical survival of the cultural descendants would be dissolved.
We already know that, from a genetic point of view, natural selection requires that the individual specimen lives enough to generate a good number of descendants; living longer may be useful to have more children and similarly, to spread a complex cultural tradition that involves long learning, such as martial arts; the lengthening of life of the teacher increases the number of cultural descendants. In this situation, natural selection will facilitate all those cultural variations that foster the life of teacher in order to expand the cultural descendants. If one considers a simple and trivial innovation, easy to imitate such as the use of a new type of perfume, then the news will spread to the whole group in a short time and a long life will be useless to increase the followers of the new fashion.
In case of cultural components having a rapid expansion, natural selection will have no reason to favor those components that foster life of an individual; in some cases may even help those that lead to death of individuals to ensure the spread of a given cultural component that, being disconnected from the purpose of genetic survival and reproduction of the same, tends to pursue by every mean its survival and dissemination. Let’s consider the case of smoking: man smokes for mental and physical dependence, but he starts smoking because of a cultural component that identifies with cigarette the concept of passage to adulthood, of belonging to a group, of rebellion to the imposed prohibitions etc.. ; the aim of the culture of cigarette is to survive and spread without worrying about statistics on deaths from smoking. Here it is an example in which culture is not subjected and at the service of our survival, but is our life which is predicated and at the service of spreading a particular culture.
Fast spreading fashions have a bond with our lives similar to that of illnesses: they need that ill people are alive but only for the time needed to infect other people. For an antelope, a virus of influenza can cause death in a few days because it make the animal more vulnerable to an attack of predators; this does not prevent anyway the virus to spread, considering the fastness of its contagious; the dreadful virus of AIDS instead needs much longer times to infect the same number of individuals and this explains its period of incubation of more than ten years: it cannot afford to kill us any faster or it would immediately extinguish as a straw fire: it wouldn’t have the time to spread.
In the human society, culture can expand like an epidemic, its success does not depend on the success of its reproductive genes: it does not play in their same team. Actually everything proceeds as if these habits had a life of their own but the analogy with virus and epidemics, although very fit to explain the spreading mechanism, shouldn’t make us think that this phenomenon is always negative. The fast spreading of a particular culture can be noxious to human survival but another type of culture can be innocuous or also beneficial; everybody knows that the habit of using drugs can lead to a premature death, that a change in the dressing style is a fundamentally innocuous cultural fashion and that a daily hygiene of the teeth is an healthy habit but in all cases these cultural components have spread with success and above all very quickly, independently from their impact on the survival of the individual or of the species, to prove the complete autonomy with the biological purposes.
2.a.8 – What directs the rapid dissemination of cultural news?
What directs the rapid dissemination of cultural news?
Since the cultural customs have a life of their own, in order to study the influence of the same on natural selection, we should examine their living environment and not ours; in the genetic evolution, the environment is what determines the success or the failure of biological mutations and similarly, in the cultural sphere, it is still the environment that determines the success of innovations in customs.
By definition, the success of a new fashion is the rating that meets in the population; in other words, if people like the new custom there will be a success in its spreading. It is interesting to note that our choices, as well as our own behavior, depend on both genetic factors, on personal experience and on cultural heritage. For example, the use of air conditioning has spread through the instinctive desire to escape the oppressive heat of hot summers; who had a bad experience in air travel will prefer the train, a Muslim, choosing food in a restaurant, would reject the pork as required by his religion. So we have identified the environment where the human customs and habits live: it is the socio-cultural context to which we belong.
It is important to note that we do not collectively make an intentional selection on culture, but we operate personal choices to meet the individual needs and, this way, we partake unaware to natural selection.
The case of artificial selection of modern farmers is quite different: they make their choices on the basis of clear final objectives and then operate the selection with consistency and continuity to achieve their purpose. The artificial selection is not the combination of random choices, perhaps made only once, of many different farmers, but exactly the opposite.
We must anyway recognize that from here to a genuine artificial selection of culture, the pace is decidedly short: it’s what the campaigns of sensitization against smoking or against the use of spirits on Saturday evening try to do; it is what has been always done by advertising in trade, that is trying to spread the use of new products. Numerous studies have been made by psychologists to make advertising more effective and there is no doubt that to launch a new product, a good technique is to leverage on primordial emotions such as sexual attraction, fear, vanity or even altruism ; it is to be noted however that these techniques can sell both products of excellent quality and those of poor quality.
The same emotional factors naturally influence the success of the new cultural variations: the use of cigarettes and spirits is based on the natural tendency towards social ritual of the human being, and the use of antibiotics on the fear of death and sorrow, the phenomenon of long distance adoptions is based on the sense of protection to children. It is interesting to recall that in past centuries, many medical practices had no effect on disease or could even make the situation worse, but they were accepted because they still helped to find comfort and hope against the fear of death, fueling the placebo effect. Even cultural variations that spread through the instinct of self preservation and the desire for prosperity can be harmful to the survival of the individual.
In many cases, however, these variants properly fulfill our aspirations; the current medical science treatment and the countless technological innovations that have elevated the quality of our lives prove it; in these cases we can truly say that culture is at the service of our lives, but we must remember that this is not a general rule and always valid.
FURTHER INFO
ANTIBIOTIC, PLACEBO EFFECT, RITE
THE LATEST FASHION
FACEBOOK
2.a.9 – Is culture linked to the group?
Is culture linked to the group?
Let’s examine the case of a population of herds of monkeys and suppose they are culturally isolated; a new cultural variant appeared in one of them, as a new signal of danger, could expand quickly throughout the group, but at this point will stop for their cultural isolation: for further expansion, we should wait until the flock, becoming increasingly large, splits into two smaller groups. A negative variant lead the group towards extinction while a positive change foster its growth and multiplication. This case is the combination of two modes of transmission of culture we have already dealt with (the family tradition and the free dissemination) and deserves to be considered separately because these genes are linked to cultural survival of the group: they are not independent, they play in the community team and not in the individual one; they are a social patrimony but do not care about the individual if not in relation with the community. The genetic equivalent is given again by bees and ants: they do not hesitate to sacrifice their lives to protect their community at every hint of danger, they reproduce by indirect way, their genes play everyone in the team of the community and pass to the next generation when the hive is reproduced: the bees live for the hive and not vice versa, and for the same reason, the same is true for our cells. This form of culture can be defined as culture of subordination to the community.
A total cultural isolation is a very rare case; it is very frequent instead that a cultural component can’t easily leave the group, so that its spreading is mainly entrusted to the community reproduction; in this case, it will be subjected to a selection similar to the case of total isolation.
For most of its history, mankind has lived in tribes with a significant cultural isolation and even today the culture of subordination to the group is an integral part of our cultural heritage: the patriotism and nationalism guide us towards the ultimate sacrifice for the homeland; the hero is a warrior figure honored in the vast majority of cultures. In the industrial age, things seem to be even worse: in the Nazi period, the culture of citizen who lives for the State was so taken to the extreme that, for the good of the State, i.e. its production and war capacities, it was politically settled that doctors had to suppress the German children of poor health, obviously without their parents knowing it, to avoid riots and protests harmful to the State itself. Conceptions of this type are actually very old: it is known that in ancient Sparta babies were examined to determine if they were promising soldiers, and if not, were eliminated. After this selection, the whole life was still conceived on the basis of servicing the homeland as military.
But the culture of subordination to the community has developed also for economic as well as military needs: the first industrial development soon did lead to the theory that the exploitation of the workers was a necessary sacrifice for the welfare of society and the country’s economic development; slavery in the United States was justified in a very similar way.
A similar model of cultural diffusion can be found even in small subgroups of a great community: the development of a new technology will support the company that has produced it, which in turn will spread it for commercial purposes, a technology that does not increase the business volume does not help the company and it will not be spread; here it is a cultural phenomenon, the new technology, linked to the survival of its company and vice versa.
Companies are small communities, who defend their own survival by fierce competition in the environment called market and then it is no coincidence that in the successful companies there is a common culture of dedication spread through the employees. This culture is rewarded by natural selection made by the competition and, in its evolution, leads to the exploitation of employees and, after that, even of the owners: it is now a classic the figure of the successful entrepreneur that devotes his life to work, sacrificing leisure and family; he has identified its survival with that of its business: entrepreneurial success has therefore taken the place of the genetic success, and personal welfare has been replaced by the company welfare.
FURTHER INFO
HERD, PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM, SLAVERY,
TECHNOLOGY, TRADITION
ROYAL BOX
CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS
2.a.10 – What is the role of human consciousness?
What is the role of human consciousness?
There is a considerable difference between genetic and cultural evolution in humans: the necessary involvement of human consciousness in the second one; innovations are often not random mutations, but reasoned responses that an individual has given to the problems he has; the success of these innovations depends then on the voluntary choices, although not very aware, that other human beings do.
The accumulation of knowledge, although a natural tendency of humanity, is also culturally encouraged: knowledge, science, studies and education are now consolidated values of our cultural tradition. Today the scientific progress allows us to better understand the evolution of culture, and the awareness of its dependence on our choices gives us the opportunity to lead it easily to our advantage, working a kind of artificial selection.
Using culture to satisfy personal needs is a practice as old as man and perhaps even more: today we know with certainty that the hominids had developed a technology to a certain level, although now it seems rudimentary, with the exaltation of the appropriate ideals, such as patriotism, religious devotion, racism and parochialism, with the political leaders always trying to drive culturally their own people to strengthen their power and wealth: wars of conquest in the name of religion, national prestige and, more recently, democracy are an example of it. Even the experimental scientific method can be seen as a voluntary choice between several theories to correctly describe nature.
The higher level of education that has gone spreading after the industrial revolution, in particular the study of history, philosophy, biology and psychology, may allow today large sections of the population to choose between different cultural models, in order to protect their personal interests, and also to study new ones, but the frequent wars, the lack of real democracy, the pollution and the economic exploitation of poor countries show that the culture of subordination to the community is still dominant on the personal well-being.
FURTHER INFO
BIOLOGY, PAROCHIALISM, CONSCIENCE, RACISM, SCIENCE
PALCO D’ONORE
AMARTYA SEN
2.a.11 – What are the routes along which cultural evolution develops?
What are the routes along which cultural evolution develops?
We can say that we have identified four main ways on which cultural evolution develops:
– family tradition, which brings culture to perfectly integrate with the genetic heritage and to protect with it the survival of offspring;
– social spreading of epidemic nature, which brings the cultural components to live their life as a cultural virus;
– tribal spreading or subordination to the community, which leads people to dedicate their lives to social group;
– conscious use or artificial selection of culture, which can exploit the culture for any purpose, including the individual welfare (or the evil of others…).
Knowledge of these four basic tracks on which evolution runs can help us to understand for what team our habits, our beliefs and our ideals play and then to operate in our turn a selection with knowledge of the facts, to take care of our personal interests too.
ROYAL BOX
ARNOLD VAN GENNEP
