Cultural evolution

Cultural evolution is an anthropological and sociological theory about the way culture changes over time. The theory of cultural evolution is that culture changes as it passes among people and among groups of people. Another definition of cultural evolution is that it is the way people change their behavior based on information learned through teaching by others, through the imitation of others, and through other forms of social transmission. The study of cultural evolution developed out of the ideas of biological evolution, which is the scientific understanding of how living organisms have evolved over time. Anthropologists and sociologists who study cultural evolution believe that culture changes, or evolves, in ways that are similar to the way living things evolve. Despite the similarities some sociologists see between cultural and biological evolution, sociologists point out that the two fields also have some very important differences. The theory of cultural evolution relies on information and theories from many different disciplines including anthropology, sociology, biology, and economics. Researchers can study particular elements of culture (e.g., language or religion) or changes in particular cultures over time.

Background

Human culture is made up of ideas, behaviors, knowledge, customs, and artifacts. Humans are a cultural species, which means that people depend on culture to help them survive. Actions including gathering and preparing food, giving birth, and other basic components of life require humans to pass information on to each other.

Many scientists believe that humans would not survive if they did not have culture. Consider this example. Think of a child who is entering a new environment for the first time. The child must find something to eat. The child could use individual learning to test out many different types of food to find what is healthy and safe to eat. That would be costly to that individual child, though, because the child could go hungry or get sick if the child ate the wrong food. However, the child could also use cultural learning. The child could watch an older, wise adult find food. If the child eats the same food as the adult, the child will most likely eat good, safe food. So, culture is vitally important to humans. It helps humans survive, especially over centuries and millennia. Some humans would most likely be able to survive for a time through individual learning, but no individual could develop the amount of learning needed to survive for a long period of time, especially given any type of natural disaster or threat.

Humans are unique in their dependence on culture. Even among primates, the human species has the most and most varied cultures. Human cultures that are very similar still have differences that distinguish them from others.

Overview

The theory of cultural evolution developed because researchers found links between the way changes take place in culture and the way changes occur in biological organisms. Charles Darwin’s late-nineteenth-century theory of evolution depended on three factors: variation, competition (or selection), and inheritance. The theory of cultural evolution relies on the same factors. Culture is transmitted; this is similar to inheritance. Culture changes, which is variation. Culture is also selected, which is similar to competition. That means that elements of culture are passed on based on how they are transmitted, how they are selected, and if they are changed in novel ways (e.g., because of a new invention). Although cultural evolution is related to biological and psychological evolution in its process, it is not the same. Biological evolution is the theory of how living beings have evolved from single-celled organisms into all life in existence. Biologists believe that evolution is responsible for most, and probably all, complex adaptive traits. Psychological evolution is the theory of how the brain, and therefore ways of thinking, have evolved in humans and other animals thanks to evolution.

One important way that cultural evolution is different from biological evolution is the type of transmission that passes on traits from one generation to another. Biological evolution and natural selection allow for only vertical transmission, which means the biological parents of an organism pass on their biological traits to the offspring. The offspring do not receive biological traits from other members of the species—only their parents. However, offspring can learn culture, norms, and behaviors from individuals other than their parents. This is called oblique transmission, because the transmission can occur between different individuals. One reason that oblique transmission is important is that individuals can learn from and adopt practices from the most successful organisms in a group.

Offspring cannot change the genetic material they have been given through vertical transmission from their parents, but they can adopt specific cultural elements from different individuals through oblique transmission. They do not merely have to do what their parents taught them to do. One way organisms decide which individuals to adopt culture from is by investigating which members of a culture or community are thriving. An organism can adopt the cultural practices of individuals in a community who have had the most success. Although proximity and familial closeness will influence what cultural information an organism adopts, the organism will also choose cultural information based on the success and importance of other community members. For this reason, cultural evolution is not guided only by which organisms survive and have the most offspring. Cultural evolution happens because people make choices about which elements of culture to adopt. For example, family size has been shown to be one element of culture that can change over time and between parents and offspring. Families in modern times are on average much smaller than those of a few generations ago, when many children were needed to help a family survive. One set of parents may choose to have a large family, but their offspring may each choose to have fewer children. The offspring could have emulated their parents, but instead they chose to emulate members of society whom they thought had better outcomes.

Although cultural evolution clearly happens through a different means than biological evolution, the two types of evolution can be related. For example, many scientists believe cultural evolution happens because of biological evolution. That is, humans have culture and survive through their reliance on culture because having a culture is an effect of natural selection. Most biologists agree that all life evolved, because of natural selection, from single-celled organisms. Obviously, these organisms did not have culture, cultural transmission, or cultural evolution. Through millennia of natural selection, humans formed. Most biologists also agree that most of the complex adaptive traits of humans evolved from natural selection for those traits. In other words, organisms with adaptive traits were the fittest. They had more offspring, and those helpful adaptive traits were passed on. Humans likely evolved to have a culture. Likewise, human biological evolution has most likely also been influenced by cultural evolution. Culture is an all-important element in human life, and humans make important decisions based on culture all the time. That means human biology is not the only factor affecting human decisions. The culture and cultural evolution are also affecting human decision-making and, in some ways, human evolution.

Although cultural evolution is most likely influenced by biological evolution, biology and genetics are not the only factors that affect cultural evolution. Cultural evolution is also affected by the way culture is transmitted. Factors such as migration can affect cultural transmission. For example, a drought could cause a group to move from one area to another. When the group migrates it takes its culture along. The migration could cause that group to transmit its culture to another society. Furthermore, that society could influence the culture of the migrating group. The reasons that cultural evolution happens are varied and extensive. Just as many different factors (including environmental factors) influence biological evolution, many factors also influence cultural evolution.

Cultural evolution is important because it allows culture to build over time. Individual humans, without a culture, could not survive. They would not understand which food is safe to eat, how to protect oneself from the elements, or how to give birth in a safe way. All of human history has been made possible because cultural evolution passes information from one generation to the next. Furthermore, it allows new information to build on cultural information from the past. People living in hunter-and-gatherer societies needed cultural information about what food to eat and how to stay warm in cold conditions. Humans eventually built on that cultural information to start agrarian societies. For example, humans in these societies learned and passed on information about not only what plants were edible but also how to grow those plants. Cultural evolution has allowed cultures to grow and change, eventually leading to modern human societies.

One important lesson of cultural evolution and the way culture is transmitted is that humans who are social are often even more successful than humans who are smart. An intelligent human could find a solution to a difficult problem. However, a social human may see other people solve multiple difficult problems in new ways. That human can solve many problems because it learned from multiple sources. This means that human culture is more important than human intelligence. A human born today could not build a computer, write a novel, or even grow a garden based on that human’s intelligence alone. Rather, it is the culmination of culture that people have transmitted and influenced over time that has allowed humans to live and survive. For this reason, interconnectedness is important for human survival.

Anthropologists and sociologists have even found that interconnectedness is important for societies. The societies that are more connected are more likely to survive. This is true in part because societies that are more interconnected have more opportunities for cultural evolution. If Society A is cut off from other societies, it will have to develop individual solutions to all its problems. However, if Society A is connected to Societies B and C, Society A could learn novel problem-solving techniques from them. Society A would not have to rely exclusively on its members; it could also benefit from the inventiveness and intelligence of other people. Researchers have also found that larger societies tend to survive better than smaller societies. This is true, at least in part, because larger societies have more people who can invent novel items and solutions and pass that information on to others in the society.

Researchers who study cultural evolution do so by tracking the changes in society. Since cultural changes are vast and numerous, tracking all the changes in society would be impossible—just as tracking all the biological changes that have taken place to create modern humans would be impossible. Instead, sociologists and anthropologists narrow their focus to examine specific cultures and specific changes to understand how and why the changes take place. Just as biological scientists have to consider the influences that affect biological change, people who study cultural evolution have to think about the various influences that affect cultural change. People who study cultural evolution can study the changes that have happened inside one culture. Researchers call this type of change cultural microevolution, because the changes did not create a new culture but altered an existing culture. People can also study cultural evolution at the level of entire societies, which is called cultural macroevolution. Researchers may choose to focus on specific cultural domains, such as language or religion, to understand their evolution over time.

People who study cultural evolution can better understand some aspects of society, such as social norms, ethnic groups, social hierarchies, and castes. Cultural evolution impacts and shapes these factors in societies. Once societies begin to adopt these elements, they take on their own unique cultures. At times, societies with different cultures may compete with each other. In the same way that some biological traits win out because of competition, cultural elements and traits can also win or die out due to competition.

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