Re: Why cultural evolution?
- From: "J.H.Boersema" <joshb@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:34:39 -0400 (EDT)
"Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Tim Tyler" <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:fjig0f$1f76$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ragland31@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Irrespective of the origin of life I've wondered why as a species (I
suppose our intelligence) our cultural evolution (science and
technology) has far outpaced our biological evolution. I've been
harping this for years and the response I get is little more
than a fart in the wind. Other animals don't have the capacity for
science and technology as I'm aware yet humans in most respects are
similar to other animals in basic instinctual drives [...]
Tim Tyler
How come humans can do science and technology?
I think the conventional answer is that these need
a certain level of ability - including a big brain.
Chimps also have big brains. However, humans developed
even bigger brains as a result of runaway sexual selection -
the ability to sing a better love song; etc. Perhaps the
evolution of big human brains was also facilitated by an
improved diet, rich in fatty acids, as a result of eating
animal produce and living in coastal environments.
RKS:
The shift away from the smaller brained chimp (or common ancestor) required
breeding isolation ie the human lineage had to stop breeding with the chimp
lineage (or the hybrids would have had smaller brains and recapitulation
back to smaller brains would have occurred). Thus humans must have
developed a distinct dislike for female chimp, gorilla, bonobo or other ape
or modern ape precursor.
Thus if we could travel back to that time we would find fewer humans dating
chimps, fewer bawdy drawings of chimps on cave walls, phone calls not
returned and that sort of thing (not having actually travelled to the past
myself, my hypothesis necessarily includes some speculation).
I think the problem of why humans have cultural technology can be
explained by the idea that a species needs to be above a certain
threshold in enough of the relevant areas, and once it is the
technological cultural process becomes self sustaining and in
principle forever expanding. The chimps are just below the threshold:
though they have dexterous hands that could manage technology,
unlike some other animals which may have big brains but no hands,
their brains could be just a tiny bit too simple yet to really start
to develop a cultural technology.
At the point where a species gets close to the necessary technological
ability, the simple technology developed like cracking nuts with
stones gets lost too soon to merge with other tool use, and/or the
chimps aren't (yet) creative enough to develop it further. But it could
happen that chimps will eventually (also) step over this threshold
also. If the more technological chimps are more successful, eventually
they should become more technological.
The humans apparently did get over the initial threshold, and once
the humans were using several simple tools the use of those tools
made them much more prone to use yet more tools and to discover
things etc. For instance in you can crack a nut with a stone, and
you can use a stick for defense, it is a relatively small step to
apply the stone to the stick in some way. Maybe one of the stones
was a flint and it cracked open by accident. Maybe none of the early
humans payed any attention to that until one individual cut himself
by accident, and then ran around with it to cut other early humans
they were fighting with (typical primate behavior). Maybe in a short
while they were all running around in that group with razor sharp
flints, and maybe eventually some of them fought over a killed
animal. Maybe one of them started cutting that animal instead. Then
the use of these tools could spread out between many groups over time.
Eventually the smartest tool users could be doing better then those
less intelligent, causing natural selection for more intelligence.
If a group never innovated to use the cutting tool, maybe that could
mean death during a difficult winter period.
This way the simple tool use once it is set on can become an avalanche
of more technology. The gap with the chimps could be increasing
quickly, and eventually the chimps are still below the threshold
millions of years later, and humans are already sending robots to
the outer planets. The original difference could have been tiny or
even zero, so that it would just be luck that some developed the
technology and others didn't, and then the two streams diverged
ever more dramatically because technology is powerful.
A bit like if you put a pen to the side of the table and bring it closer
to the edge. At some point it falls off: a tiny change or even no change
(a bit of vibration/luck) brings the pen in a totally different position
that you wouldn't expect when projecting the earlier changes and their
effect. I guess technology can do that because it perpetuates itself and
makes itself bigger and bigger just because there is already some there.
Sounds like a reasonable explanation to me ... could happen I guess,
and not require some great evolutionary oddity. The chimp has a brain
adapted not for tool use yet, but they are capable of simple tool usage
in principle. If they try it maybe they will eventually develop into
a technical human like species. Their simplest tool use may already be
enough to set off a technological chain-reaction (in theory.)
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