Culture has redirected human genetic evolution since Homo erectus, not only recently.

Evidence

Finally, my undergraduates sometimes ask me if human evolution has stopped or reversed. Their intuition is that natural selection operates on our genes to better adapt individuals to survive in their environments. Since the products of recent cultural evolution now permit us to cure once-deadly infectious diseases, fix once-disabling torn knee ligaments, and artificially inseminate once-infertile couples, natural selection somehow isn’t acting to better adapt us to the “natural world,” the world without culture. The answer is, of course, that natural selection certainly has not stopped; it has merely changed direction. This, however, is not something new. … To throw this question into stark relief, realize that Early Homo or Homo erectus could have asked the same question. These apes were gradually losing their big teeth, powerful jaw muscles, and large digestive systems while they were becoming addicted to high-quality foods and food-processing technologies, which required the know-how to find tubers and involved manufactured cutting tools and, at some point, fire and cooking. Some precocious erectus , with the same confusion as some of my students, might have worried that natural selection had stopped or reversed because stone tools and fire were now doing the work that their powerful jaw muscles and big teeth once did. The effect of culture on human genetic evolution is not new. Cultural evolution is just, once again, sending our species’ genetic evolution off in some new direction, down a coevolutionary alley that no other species has yet experienced. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 1051

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• 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; Cultural evolution has been the central driver of human genetic evolution for eons. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 1015; Humans now alter evolutionary heritages and can shape their own biological futures. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 188 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural evolution has been the central driver of human genetic evolution for eons. #corroborates (0.95) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 1015
• Religious practices may have genetically altered human populations through gene-culture coevolution #exemplifies (0.85)
• Religious practices may have shaped human genes, but proof is pending #exemplifies (0.85)
• Humans now alter evolutionary heritages and can shape their own biological futures. #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 188
• Religious prosocial beliefs may have shaped human genetic evolution #exemplifies (0.80)
• Cultural upbringing shapes human nature far more than biology does. #expands (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 173