Cultural evolution
is usually the most effective way of deciding which practice to take up when information from other individuals is poor. This can be exemplified if any one individual receives a bit of ‘poor’ information from a group member which makes them 60% likely to take up a particularly advantageous behaviour. However, by sampling this information from ten members, if the individual chooses the majority behaviour, the chances of him obtaining the advantageous behaviour rises to 75%. This transmission will mean good ideas are likely to be adopted by the whole of the group. Prestige biases and the tendency to copy the majority are innate psychological mechanisms which are subject to gene- culture co-evolution, since, as culture became a successful strategy, natural selection favours those who adopt the social learning biases. Social learning, however, created a crisis. ‘Visual Theft’ 58 was prevalent, individuals with novel ideas or tools would have their technology stolen from them by other group members. An important solution to this was language. Firstly, those who had socially learned a behaviour could pay deference to their teacher to other members of the group through language which would in turn allow from the spread of the teacher’s culture. Why people want their own culture spread is not entirely clear. Wealthy female members of modern society for example tend to have fewer children instead pursue their career, thus promoting their culture. 59 This could be due to a form of cultural group selection. Language also could have evolved to allow for trading tools or goods individuals have made. Mark Pagel argues that language could allow for negotiations and greater cooperation within a group. For example, if you have made many arrows and approach a group member with poor language skills but with many bows and offer him the arrows, he may consider them a gift and run away with them. Angered you may then fight with him putting yourself at risk. However, language can resolve such problems. So once again we see gene culture co-evolution favouring those with good language skills.
Culture sped up ‘evolution’ for humans, since social learning can generate and preserve changes within a group far quicker than genetic evolution can. This is an important concept in explaining why culture became the successful survival strategy for Homo Sapiens hunter gatherers. Social learning leads to mistakes, and an interesting example is the spread of suicide. 60 In the USA or other countries with a celebrity culture, after a celebrity has committed suicide, there is a spike in suicide of people of similar age and ethnicity, in a sort of prestige bias. Clearly you are more likely to socially learn from people who you have many shared features with. The point is culture evolution makes mistakes at a higher rate than genetic evolution, meaning in a relatively stable environment, genetic evolution is more effective. However, in the fluctuating climates of the Pleistocene 70,000 years ago, the same time as the first emergence of advanced human culture, the speed which Homo Sapiens’ culture could evolve allowed for the spread of humans and the breaking of the ‘rule of two’ 61 which dictates all organisms average two offspring. As humans spread from the horn of Africa, presumedly to find new land, their environment would also be rapidly changing, meaning once again culture and its rapid evolution would come into its own. You might ask why suicide does not spread throughout a whole population? Genes keep ‘culture on a leash’, 62 and we have innate tendencies to avoid deleterious behaviours, although these can be overcome in particular social environments, but in general what we might call our good judgement, on the whole stops acting in these negative ways. Cultures can be said to have an immune system. Important in the spread of humans is the role of group selection. 63 The theory dictates that human groups will be selected preferentially according to their particular cultural evolution, with less able groups being out-competed and often usurped by their competitors this leads to a degree of altruism within a group. This altruism has been attributed to a form of both reciprocal altruism and kin selection which
60 Henrich and McElreath (2007). 61 Pagel (2012), 62. 62 Wilson (1978). 63 Soltis, Boyd and Richerson (1995).
58 Pagel (2012), 69. 59 Ehlrich and Ehlrich (2008), 110.
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