Mechanisms of cultural evolution

Separately, neither reason nor socialization can lead to such a unique result that we have for a person. Eusocial insects (ants, termites, bees, etc.) created their civilizations of a lower level, without sufficient intelligence.

2. Socialization and cultural adaptation

Methods of cognition

The Homo sapiens species simultaneously used 3 methods of obtaining information.

A practical way based on experience in developing methods of work, assimilating customs and moral values in populations, obtaining other information to satisfy their vital needs.

The religious method of cognition refers to general questions about the structure of the world. Although he gave incorrect (from the current point of view) answers about the structure of the world, it is better than nothing. After all, in ancient times, people began to ask the question – why? The simple answers of religious legends were easily replicated in their heads. So religion conquered the minds, made life easier, grouping people according to faith.

The evolutionary significance of religions consists, in my opinion, in the fact that religions contributed to the emergence of social relations in large communities, restraining aggression in people’s behavior within a certain framework, creating in the minds of people some moral norms demanded by a social society by instilling faith in one or another God, rooting customs, some moral principles by methods of manipulating consciousness.

There are many religions in different parts of the world, where isolated populations of Homo sapiens previously lived, but this only suggests that they were in demand by the logic of cultural evolution, the development of the HS mind and communication languages. All religions have their own gods, their own principles and their own holidays. Religions do not have any consensus on this matter.

The scientific method of cognition, based on experience, which is generalized, gives all knowledge a systematic nature of laws that allows you to make scientific predictions, and as a result, engage in innovative activities: invent technologies and tools for hunting, labor and war. For a long time, the last two methods of cognition did not intersect and coexisted peacefully.

Socialization and reason

Without sufficient reason, without the ability to think abstractly, the scientific method of cognition would be impossible, which means that all innovations are impossible, a high level of technology development, an increase in labor productivity are impossible. A civilization built without advanced intelligence would not be very effective.

Ants are very social insects. They embarked on the path of socialization 100 million before us. years old. They are biologically successful. But their brains are too small to create an effective mind. They have a distributed mind like a community. Socializing individuals without sufficient intelligence has a limited effect.

The mind of one person cannot cope with a difficult task. Big tasks require the consolidated efforts of many separate minds. For thousands of years, stone tools were made by our ancestors, but there was no effective breakthrough. It was not because creative people were disunited, living in small tribes. There was a slow evolution of the mind itself, the methods of hunting, obtaining food, technological methods of making stone tools.

To get results from the work of the mind, you need an appropriate environment, exchange of views with colleagues, and all kinds of creative interaction. If the founder of our Russian science, M. Lomonosov, had not been able to get from his village to Moscow, he would have remained an unknown peasant, plowing the land and repairing clamps, and Moscow University would not bear his name.

The mind in the brain arises in the processes of self-organization. Among savages, reason will be of little demand. There is no demand for it.

All computer microcircuits (hardware) remain motionless until the user turns on the power, thus combining all microcircuits into a single structure. The brain is the same carrier of the mind, as the «hardware» of the computer is the carrier of programs.

Socialization activates the processes of self-organization, strengthens the mind, making it collective, belonging to the entire society. Only the collective mind is able to build a developed civilization.

Living in large settlements (socialization) makes possible the division of labor, which greatly increases its productivity in comparison with labor in subsistence farming. This was noted by the founder of economic doctrine A. Smith in his famous work «The Wealth of Nations».

An increase in labor productivity naturally causes the development of trade, navigation, scientific research and many other areas and activities. At the same time, market relations arise, and the construction of civilization begins.

The transformation of Homo sapiens into a human can be conditionally attributed to the period 6000—10000 years ago. This is the conditional beginning of social (cultural evolution), the point when the constantly increasing speed of cultural evolution has reached a speed that is significant by human standards. Interestingly, church leaders consider the same date as the beginning of the world – when God descended and created everything. And before this date, nothing supposedly happened. But scientists believe that prior to this date, there was biological evolution for 3.8 billion years. Such a «small» difference in world outlook.

The emergence of cultural adaptations

Any evolution of living things consists in adaptation (adaptation) to environmental conditions.

Cultural adaptation is the preservation in generations (inheritance) of information obtained as a result of activity, which changes thinking and behavior.

In biological evolution, genetic inheritance of properties acquired during a lifetime is impossible, which has theoretical and experimental confirmation. Cultural adaptations occur in all mammals due to the presence of a brain. But there is a natural limit that limits the further spread of these adaptations in populations.

The species Homo sapiens managed to overcome this limit. By the way, 50 thousand years ago, there were several other species of great apes, which also managed to overcome the limit, but as a result of natural selection, they became extinct before they survived to this day. The most famous of them are Neanderthals, which represent a separate parallel branch, which are 99.5% genetically identical with modern humans. The evolutionary branches of the ancestors of Neanderthals and modern humans diverged about 500—700 thousand years ago.

It was not labor or walking upright that turned Homo Sаpiens into a man. The most important factors that determined the emergence of adaptations of cultural evolution for Homo Sapiens and his transformation into a man who has become the dominant species on the planet are the following.

1. Achievement of sufficient intelligence by the species of Homo Sapiens as a result of evolutionary development.

2. Socialization of the species, i.e. unification first into tribes, then into large settlements, into cities and states.

Separately, neither reason nor socialization can lead to such a unique result that we have for a person. Eusocial insects (ants, termites, bees, etc.) created their civilizations of a lower level, without sufficient intelligence.

3. Cultural evolution of Homo sapiens

About evolution

EVOLUTION – (from Lat. Evolutio – deployment) in a broad sense, a synonym for development; processes of change occurring in living and inanimate nature, as well as in social systems.

This term is used to refer to the entire development process, which consists of fairly smooth periods and sharp revolutionary periods. Sometimes this term is used to name only smooth periods of development.

The idea of evolution cannot be considered only one of the hypotheses explaining the world order. In biology, this is the only reasonable theory that allows you to combine the available information about the life of different creatures at different times.

Prerequisites for the evolution of living things

The prerequisites for the evolution of living nature are as follows:

1. Variability of objects of living nature. Descendants are not clones of the parents and are always different from them in some aspects.

2. Selection. Living objects, being in populations, are forced to fight for limited food resources. Therefore, inevitably there is a struggle with others like themselves or with environmental conditions for vital resources, i.e. the possibility of existence and reproduction. Charles Darwin called these processes natural selection.

3. Inheritance. Those individuals that, by their innate qualities, will be most adapted (adapted) to the conditions of existence, have more chances to survive and reproduce. These qualities in biological evolution are provided by the mechanisms of inheritance.

Charles Darwin established the first two conditions, but he knew nothing about the mechanisms of inheritance. The mechanisms of inheritance were investigated later.

If at least one of these conditions is not met, for some objects, then they do not evolve. Throughout biological evolution, the first and third conditions are met due to the presence of genes in cells, which play a key role in the mechanisms of inheritance.

Genes ensure the inheritance of only innate properties, and not acquired during life.

This is one of the cornerstones of population genetics.

Human cultural evolution has been observed throughout the entire historical period. Its manifestation consists in the accumulation of cultural achievements (adaptations) by humanity, achievements not innate, but acquired. This raises questions about how cultural adaptations arise and where they accumulate and what are the mechanisms of their inheritance. After all, cultural evolution is an observable fact. What plays the role of replicators (from the Latin replicatio, renewal, repetition) in cultural evolution instead of genes?

Evolution without genes

In populations of living organisms, in response to changes in the external conditions of existence, adaptations arise as a result of selection. These adaptations are fixed in genes and transmitted during the sexual process to the next generation, i.e. genes carry out vertical replication, link generations through inheritance.

Adaptation in biological evolution is a change in the morphology of organisms, allowing the body to better adapt to the conditions of existence. At the cellular level, adaptations consist in modifying the genome, which largely programs the morphological features of the organism.

Due to the established mechanism of transmission of adaptations through the sexual process, the restructuring of the morphology of organisms in populations occurs slowly, according to the scale of human life.

The historical process of human development (cultural evolution) demonstrates the development of culture. One culture replaces another, inheriting some of the features of the previous one. These changes occur much faster than the processes in biological evolution.

The presence of the evolution of human culture indicates that three conditions necessary for its course are fulfilled. But inheritance in culture is the inheritance of acquired properties that cannot be carried out with the help of genes. It can be concluded that the observed human cultural evolution, apparently, occurs with the help of other replicators (not genes) and a different inheritance mechanism.