Biological and Cultural Evolution
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Highlights
- Nature knows that, in the long run, established species are expendable and new species are essential. That
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The other half of the story is cultural evolution, the story of changes in the life of our planet caused by the spread of ideas rather than by the spread of genes. Cultural evolution had its beginnings as soon as animals with brains evolved, using their brains to store information and using patterns of behavior to share information with their offspring.
- Spoken language is incomparably nimbler than the language of the genes. Wells saw that we happen to live soon
- Memes spread through human populations by social contact far more rapidly than genes spread by sexual contact. Just as our behavior at the individual level is controlled by selfish genes, our behavior at the social level is controlled by selfish memes.
- Biological evolution, as demonstrated by Kimura and Goodenough, accelerated the birth of new species by favoring the genetic isolation of small populations. Cultural evolution had the opposite effect, erasing differences between related species and bringing them together.
- Cultural evolution happens when cousins learn each other’s languages and share stories around the cave-fire.
- As a consequence of cultural evolution, biological differences become less important and cousins learn to live together in peace. Sharing of memes brings species together and sharing of genes is the unintended consequence.
- The transition caused a reversal of the direction of evolution from diversification to unification, from the proliferation of diverging species to the union of species into a brotherhood of man.