Year: 2022

SPEED OF ACCUMULATION. “Ideas regarding the origin of cumulative culture can inform thinking about factors that might affect recent and ongoing cumulative cultural evolution. The invention of writing, followed by digital media, surely greatly increased the fidelity of social learning and, potentially, the speed of cumulative culture.” http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7853.full View in LinkedIn

DRIVERS. “Demographically, the threefold increase in the world population and increased global mobility in the past century should also have accelerated cumulative culture.” (Or its demise). http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7853.full View in LinkedIn

SELF-REFERENTIAL. “Science itself is a cumulative cultural evolutionary process.’” (Nature contemplating herself). http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7853.full View in LinkedIn

NEW SCIENCE. “The theory of cultural evolution offers a means of taking culture seriously within a scientific, evolutionary framework.” http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7853.full View in LinkedIn

GENES INTERACT WITH CULTURE. “Humans also exhibit many cultural adaptations to new environments, such as practices related to clothing, shelter, and food. Human culture interacts with genes and the environment in complex ways.” https://lnkd.in/dBjjWJE View in LinkedIn

ANIMAL CULTURE. “Can animal culture drive evolution? Once the purview of humans, culture has been observed in all sorts of animals. But are these behaviors merely ephemeral fads or can they shape the genes and traits of future generations?” https://lnkd.in/dJXXw8R View in LinkedIn

NOT JUST HUMAN. “Scientists once placed culture squarely in the human domain. But discoveries in recent decades suggest that a wide range of cultural practices—from foraging tactics and vocal displays to habitat use and play—may influence the lives of other animals as well.” Even the merest bacteria, http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7734.full View in LinkedIn

LANGUAGES or more simply, communication is found in all life forms, often in chemical messages, such as quorum sensing in bacteria; one can argue that communication is the fountain of cultural evolution, and thus, culture is to be found in all communities of creatures, right down to viruses. Run with that one! View in LinkedIn

WIDESPREAD ANIMAL CULTURE. “Studies attribute additional orca behaviors, such as migration routes and song repertoires, to culture. Other research suggests that a finch’s song, a chimpanzee’s nut cracking, and a guppy’s foraging route are all manifestations of culture. Between 2012 and 2014, over 100 research groups published work on animal culture covering 66 species.” http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7734.full View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this two weekend consideration of the tricky subject of culture and evolution. One can argue that any society, glued together by very diverse modes of communication, develops an arsenal of cultural tools that may, or may not, be distinguished from genetic evolution, that help that group adapt, evolve and succeed. Culture may simply be a complex form of adaption that interlaces with genetics in ways to be discovered. Is the monarch butterfly’s migration map, which changes annually according to conditions,and is transmitted to the next generation, genetic or cultural? View in LinkedIn