The Evolution of Culture: Adaptive Socialization and Units of Inheritance

by j.w.gibson, copyright 2006

Introduction

The development of a highly complex set of social strategies has enabled humans to exert considerable control over their environments. Humans are inextricably social organisms, and as such must successfully develop species-normal functions across a variety of environmental and social domains (Scarr, 1993). Humans who do not develop species-normal behavior will be less successful at accessing social organizations and extra-genetic information, attracting potential mates, and/or gaining preferential access to resources. In order to become species-normal, human evolution has produced a singular, highly dynamic, mutable mechanism to provide the appropriate opportunities for species-normal development: culture. Culture is maintained by individuals’ ever changing personal ideas, beliefs, and behaviors. It does not exist on its own, but rather in the minds of each individual. Culture is a social adaptation that provides a generic framework for the processing of developmental information and experience necessary for species-normal development. The impact of culture on individual development cannot be underestimated. Cultural constructs influence every cognitive structure, the interpretation and appropriateness of behavioral actions, and the development of motivations. Because cultural ownership resides with individual members, a “culture” is in a perpetual state of flux, adapting through the actions of individuals.


In evolution, increasingly complex structures are always the result of natural selection. All life is a result of natural selection on the genetic design, or biology, of an organism. All extant behaviors of organisms must therefore be rooted in biology. Considering a mental module that contained the propensity for cultural participation would need to be exceedingly complex, the only likely explanation is that culture is a product of selective design. Imagine the different cognitive machines necessary to sort, categorize, input, recall, evaluate, and differentiate information! Klein, Cosmides, Tooby, and Chance (2002) identified factors in the evolution of memory, a necessary yet minute fraction, of culture. Current theories on memory suggest that there may be up to five different, isolable memory systems: procedural, perceptual-representational, primary, semantic, and episodic (Klein, Cosmides, Tooby, & Chance, 2002). Each of these memory systems entails, at least, dozens of sub-procedural mechanisms for acquiring, processing, evaluating, and making meaning from input. To describe the total complexity of the mechanisms behind human culture may prove nearly impossible. However, it is possible to develop theories of, what I term, super-organization. That is, what managerial or organizational structures are necessary in a mental module that has developed to support cultural knowledge transmission as an adaptive function?


The difficulty in convincing the “hard” evolutionary sciences that such a structure exists or could be materially identified rests on the fact that psychological structures, and especially adaptive cognitive architecture, are troublesome to describe and support empirically. While theory supports that individuals should demonstrate highly complex mechanisms, or specialized modules for dealing with a variety of domain specific problems (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990), proving those structures exist is another matter. However, several evolutionary studies have found evidence to support the existence of adaptive modules. Utilization of biological adaptive theory will be necessary if psychology fully wishes to explain the evolution of culture. This paper discusses the evolution of culture as an adaptive strategy which transmutes survival information and species-normal behaviors. It is suggested that if culture begins in the minds of individual members, then a genetic component is more than probable, and that certain cultural traits may be transmitted as “units of inheritance” (Griesemer, 2000).

Human Evolution: Cognitive Programs

The study of human evolution has finally come to understand that multidisciplinary theories are needed to explain the extent and magnitude of human adaptations. Evolutionary psychology attempts to identify and explain the development of cognitive structures. These programs adapted by natural selection in a particular environmental situation. Darwinian theorists unanimously agree “that [natural] selection is the explanatory law” (Fracchia & Lewontin, 1999).

Evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and physical anthropologists have dramatically strengthened the range of theoretical models of human evolution. Psychology and other social sciences, have suffered from data envy, leading to skepticism about the accuracy of psychological inferences. Given the recency of evolutionary theory across the social sciences, it will take some time before confidence in experimentation is acceptable to other divisions of evolutionary study. Theories in evolutionary psychology are treated cautiously due to “underexposed opportunities for falsification” (Conway & Schaller, 2002). Others have offered criticisms about the nature of cognitive programs. Citing methodological inadequacies, Fodor rejects the idea that the mind evolved due to massive modularity; instead arguing that a small genetic alteration could easily have produced the difference in cognitive capacity of hominids (Okasha, 2003). Considering the complexity, specificity, and interconnectedness of cognitive programs, the hypothesis that these programs are types of neurological software ready to respond to environmental and cultural input, offer an organism an array of appropriate behaviors, calculate their potential effectiveness and consequences and build memory experiences for future reference, in addition to abstract organization and evaluation, seem to be attributed to small genetic alteration.

While evolutionary biologists and physical anthropologists have collected immense physical data in support of the evolution of anatomical structures, psychologists have had a difficult time deciding how to collect their “invisible” data. The psychological structures of behavior are so mixed up in the dynamics of environmental, social, and cultural interactions that to define a concrete mechanism is nearly hopeless. What psychologists must do is search for measurable behavior components which can be subjected to positivist science.
It is hard to separate the human mind from other physical structures. The brain is clearly a result of natural selective processes. There can be no logical argument against the evolution of culture as a human adaptation. Scientists universally agree that human biological hardware is definitely a process of evolution Indeed, when evolutionary psychologists suggest that the myriad of cognitive structures that developed to solve adaptive problems in ancient environments are evident in modern populations, these claims are generally accepted; if still hard to fully support with experimentation.

Culture is a biological adaptation and must be explained in the biological sciences (Fracchia & Lewontin, 1999). One stated goal of evolutionary psychology is to answer the grand question: what is human nature? Tooby and Cosmides (1990) have described human nature as “a set of innate psychological mechanisms and developmental programs” (p.23). Investigation of how cultural knowledge is organized, created, and used is fundamental to the interpretation of all other human experiences.

At a fundamental level, all organisms are chunks of biology that interact in different capacities in their environments. They continuously process information from around them and devise behaviors that satisfy some end. It is completely reasonable to assume that if all organisms are chunks of biology and all biology is subject to evolutionary forces, then any behavior, which is rooted in biological actions, must be somehow represented genetically. The brain itself is an adaptation that directs the entire organism in a coordinated manner. Any evolved structure, cognitive or behavioral, is the result of genetic design, manufacture, and environmental influence.

Evolutionary psychology is advantageously placed to illustrate and explain the cognitive structures of culture as a pan-human phenomenon. Evolutionary theory can help to explain how culture functions as the super organizer of social experience by illustrating how such organization satisfies a number of adaptive problems. The application of evolutionary perspectives in psychology is especially powerful at the explanatory level (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). Because genes are filtered through natural selection, they are constantly engaged by environmental influences (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). The debate about the extent of the interaction between genes and environment is now over. Finally it seems psychologists are discovering ways to describe the nature of the relationship: culture.

Cultural Conceptions

The concept of culture has been tragically misdefined, as a static, causal agent, affecting humans, but not affected by them (Buss, 2001). Part of the problem stems from an earlier tendency of anthropology to favor descriptive methods over explanatory methods. Theoretical models utilizing descriptive rather than explanatory data naturally produce descriptive accounts, which are limited to cross-cultural comparisons. Comparisons of different cultural apparatus are only marginally useful because they draw dark lines between cultures while failing to identify universals. In addition, the sheer volumes of information cultures define make a clear and useful definition slippery. The existence of every human experience resides somewhere in culture! Every fleeting thought, darkest dream, most mundane actions are made meaningful by our utilization of cultural information.

How does one describe, explain, and differentiate all the cumulative behavior represented in the total collection of human culture? It consists of ever changing “content of what is to be valued and acquired; biology provides the motivation and intelligence for learning it. Cultures define what is desirable to be learned, what is to be believed, and how to behave.” (Scarr, 1993). Cultures also establish an available parameter of opportunities that provide both normal and abnormal species development (Scarr, 1993). Cultures form boundaries and expectations of human social behavior. Cultures are “go-betweens,” buffering humans from a geography where they are dependent on energy resources. Culture acts as the unifying human house from which all developmental information is passed, evolutionary objectives are translated, and through which humans build understanding about life.

Humans have developed and been developed by culture. Input from the socioenvironment interacts within a highly complex set of social, group, and interpersonal factors that are used to construct knowledge about species-appropriate behavior. In turn, the success or failure of behaviors to satisfy an adaptation issue are encoded as memories, useful for providing background information in future decision making situations (Klein et al., 2002). To the extent that memories are stored in the neurological tissues of the brain and governed by the activity of neural cells, it is very probable that some aspects of acquired environmental information can become encoded in DNA. If it were not possible for “learned” behavior to become encoded, then each individual would have to re-learn the entirety of species specific information. “Whether the evolution is variational or transformational there must be some mechanism by which a new generation of successors retains some vestige of the changes that occurred in a previous time” (Fracchia & Lewontin, 1999).

The utilization of evolutionary theory in pursuit of cultural mechanisms is mildly controversial, to say the least. The basis for an evolutionary perspective in psychology is justified by the fact that at least some aspects of human cognition are the result of Darwinian natural selection (Okasha, 2003). Culture may well prove to be the super-organizer of the cognitive and developmental programs, a highly evolved and specialized organizational adaptive response to manage constantly increasing amounts of social-species specific information. The challenge for researchers is to design experiments that effectively collect solid data on the nature of cognitive organization machines and identify the process by which environmental experience can change the genetic signature of heritable programs.

Niche Construction: How Culture Shapes the Environment

Human social groups develop specific strategies relevant to the social and environmental factors in a local area. The job of culture is to provide a general framework from which a range of strategies are available. For example, Cohen (1998) discussed the adaptive function of a culture of honor in the South and West of America. Cohen explains the high acceptance of violence and strong purveyance of individual honor as reactions to the “frontier” history and minimalism of law enforcement. In an environment where men were forced to protect their interests and solve conflict themselves, honor and the legitimization of violence increased one’s fitness (Cohen, 1998). Numerous localized (meaning indigent to a specific geography) cultural adaptations have been noted in anthropological studies. In summarizing the historical development of cultural understanding, Buss (2001) discusses the differential development of social aggression in neighboring villages of Yanomamo Indians of Venezuela. At least two groups show profoundly different personality traits. Lowland Yanomamo men are highly aggressive; they often hit their wives with sticks for minor infractions, often challenge other men to club or ax fights, and sometimes declare war on neighboring villages, killing the men and capturing their wives (Buss, 2001).

Highland Yanomamo villages are markedly different. Disliking fighting, they are more peaceful. These Yanomamo do not raid neighboring villages or engage in ax fights, rarely in club fights. Instead the virtues of cooperation are stressed (Buss, 2001). Food sources are more plentiful in the lowlands; aggression is advantageous for controlling as much food and reproduction resources as possible, and indeed, the most aggressive Yanomamo have the most wives (Buss, 2001). Highland food resources are much more limited. These Yanomamo have learned to pool their collective resources increasing the survival of the group over the individual. Cultural influences favored cooperative behavior where thin resources can be stretched more equally (Buss, 2001). The particular manifestation of culture depends, in part, upon resident ecological variables.

By altering human behavior, culture can impact the local ecology of an area. Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman (2001) suggest that there is ample evidence to argue that “cultural activities have influenced human genetic evolution by modifying sources of natural selection and altering genotype frequencies in some human populations” (Laland, Odling-Smee, & Feldman, 2001). Niche construction is the study of how organisms change their environments to better solve survival problems. Humans build homes, cities, shopping centers, hospitals, parks, schools; they change nature and live in an artificial environment advantageous to the species survival. The impact of organisms on the environment is not small. For instance, cyanobacteria are responsible for the creation of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere; over millions of years of photosynthesis (Laland et al., 2001). In addition, the invention of nuclear weapons, digital information processing, and industrialization have begun environmental changes that are yet unquantifiable. Few species have changed the selective environment as drastically as human beings (Laland et al., 2001).

Cultural behaviors do affect the environments that humans live in. Evolutionary biologists stress that culture frequently affects evolution by modifying the selection pressures and biasing available resource situations (Laland et al., 2001). Agriculture and industry affect natural selection pressures on population size and structure (Laland et al., 2001). Gene-culture coevolution theories have been developed using mathematical and conceptual models to describe how genetic evolution influences culture and how culture drives genetic changes (Laland et al., 2001). Laland et al. (2001) make several important conclusions about heritable units. First, there is no simple function that relates frequency of cultural niche-constructing activity to the frequency of the population’s genes. Cultural activity is too broad to be explained by simple relationships. For example, the Kwa-speaking yam farmers of West Africa have a significantly high frequency of the sickle-cell allele (Laland et al., 2001). Traditionally, these people clear cut the rainforest to make room for fields, simultaneously creating new standing water resources which amplify the reproduction of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Mosquito population is also dependent on environmental factors, such as rainfall, and rainfall is dependent on meteorological processes and so on. The selective pressure to increase the sickle-cell allele cannot be simply explained by a dual relationship between cultural activity and environment, there are too many variables in the system (Laland et al., 2001). Evidence of cultural processes can be seen in genetic variability when cultural activities work to change selective pressures.

“Cultural evolution does not exist as a distinct category from biological evolution” (Griesemer, 2000). Identification of the “units of heritance” of cultural transmission rely on a specific definition of a reproducer, which is a combination of genetic instructions and developmental opportunities (Griesemer, 2000). Genes do not, by themselves, develop into useful structures. Culture transmits developmental opportunities to individuals who in turn provide relevant genetic material with the interaction necessary to successfully develop into a phenotype. Units of heritable structures concerning culture are likely to be those which require environmental and social data to mature into their intended structure or purpose.

Conclusion

Finding conclusive cognitive structures, for which the biological sciences support, is a worthy yet problematic area of study for evolutionary psychologists. Until neurological functioning can be “grouped” into specific domains, physically and empirically delineated, and linked to cultural organization strategies, evolutionary psychologists will struggle with an acceptable explanation for the relationship between culture, genes, and evolution. The study of memory systems, information processing, personality, and social interactions are all benefited by the successful development of a theory that explains how cultural influences contribute to genetic variability. When looking for cultural units which may be coded in genetics, psychologists should focus on those structures whose genes require developmental experiences or other species-conveyed information. Future developments in biology will be crucial in providing psychologists with empirical connections between environmental pressures and genetic encoding processes. If the ultimate goal of the human sciences is to explain “human nature” then a synthesis of the life and social sciences is absolutely necessary.

The return of Darwinistic theory across the sciences has clearly established the cooperative ability and utility of cross-discipline perspectives in explaining complex evolutionary processes. If culture functions as a super-organizer of environmental experience and extra-genetic species knowledge, then its explanation is of considerable importance and should receive due attention by researchers.

References

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