Cultural evolution has been the central driver of human genetic evolution for eons.
Evidence
While a big advance on prior nonevolutionary views, where culture existed in some ethereal sphere disconnected from genes and biology, these older evolutionary approaches are still off the mark. As we’ve seen, phenomena like Hula-Hoops could be replaced by Inuit snow houses, adaptive food taboos, composite bows, divination rituals that improve hunting, and the know-how to locate water in the Australian desert; that is, things that directly influence our species ability to survive as hunter-gatherers. It’s not just that these older approaches fail to consider some minor influences of culture on biology or some recent and rare feedback loops showing how cultural practices, like drinking cow’s milk, have shaped genetic changes; these now outdated evolutionary views fail to recognize that the central force driving human genetic evolution for hundreds of thousands of years, or longer, has been cultural evolution. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 1015
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Standard accounts wrongly frame culture as beginning only after genetic evolution finished. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 1012; Humans currently satisfy the criteria for a major biological transition. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 1008; Cultural evolution can create selection pressures stronger than natural ones — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 282 (+16 more)
Broader Connections
- Religious prosocial beliefs may have shaped human genetic evolution
#exemplifies(0.88) - Religious practices may have genetically altered human populations through gene-culture coevolution
#exemplifies(0.88) - The boundary between biological and cultural evolution is dissolving
#corroborates(0.85) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 493 - Cultural learning skills drove rapid human adaptation across all habitats
#expands(0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 125 - Humans evolved specifically to absorb culture along with its prejudgments
#expands(0.78) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 353 - Cultural upbringing shapes human nature far more than biology does.
#corroborates(0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 173 - Evolutionary and neurological accounts cannot fully explain cultural patterns
#complicates(0.72) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 807