Cultural evolution
has been greatly advanced through human intelligence. 64 However, there are problems when scaling up these methods of cooperation into large human groups and the number of strategies to avoid reciprocal altruism rises. Moreover mathematical models have shown the difficulty of getting cooperation started in the first place. Due to conformist biases, groups tend to maintain their ideas and beliefs and these are passed through the generations. Boyd and Richerson 65 have analysed mathematical models which confirm group selection if certain assumptions are met. Group selection can occur as long as variation is maintained between groups. Prestige biases are important since groups are likely to look towards a few able men. For example, leaders such as Jesus put an ‘ethnic stamp’ onto a group which creates variation from other ethnic stamps, i.e Mohammed and Islam. 66 Moreover, when immigrants do enter a group, they are likely to be subject to conformity biases thus they will adopt their new group’s ideas. Selection on cultural groups is also rapid since the death of a culture does not depend on the death of people. When a group is defeated in war or outcompeted for resources, the people will often adopt the new culture, hence group selection. Moreover, a successful society may attract imitators so their culture will be spread without any conflict at all. This means that group’s members may act altruistically to benefit the group, although it does not directly benefit our genes. This does not entirely answer the question of our altruism since it begs the question why put the reproduction of our cultures above the reproduction of our genes. One might argue, that we are like the slime mould amoeba, individual organisms who build towers for the dispersion of just one amoeba’s spores. 67 In our case by each one of us being altruistic, we can communally increase the chances of our genes be transmitted and building a community
altruistically for us to live in. Individuals will surround themselves with individuals who share altruistic tendencies which can be represented by behaving for the benefit of the group, in the long run, we will on average leave more offspring. If one human couple or amoeba tried to reproduce on its own, they would not be successful. Human genes have taken a massive gamble, by giving control of our species to our brains and its resultant culture. In many ways the gamble paid off. Humans are rapidly on their way to reach a population of 10 billion 68 and our cultural evolution made all this possible. Richard Dawkins coined the term meme for the new replicators of culture. However, this over simplification of culture is misplaced. 69 Our minds are indefinitely complex and although ideas are transmitted, there is no guarantee that the same ‘meme’ is viewed the same in the mind of any two individuals, thus giving memes a copying fidelity of 0, meaning they are not replicators. 70 Many people argue that it was our genes that were responsible for our dominance of the world however this is not the full story. Genes co-evolved with culture. It became clear culture was a successful strategy for survival in our hunter gatherer groups on the African Savannah. Thus, as more culture evolved, so did genes that benefit culture, such as increasingly large brains and fine motor control of our mouth for language. Why humans left the Horn of Africa at that particular moment 70,000 years ago to populate the world is unclear. However, the rapid advancement of cultural evolution due to the climate is perhaps a factor. Culture and its mechanisms of transmission and evolution among humans is therefore of a similar importance to our genetic lineage and associated adaptations, and has been somewhat neglected when we try to explain our success.
64 Richerson and Boyd (2001), 456. 65 Richerson and Boyd (1985). 66 Richerson and Boyd (2001), 457. 67 Richerson and Boyd (2001) 456; Pagel (2012), 85.
68 Stephen Emmot, 10 Billion, Royal Court. 69 Dawkins (1976). 70 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics#Criticism
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