Mechanisms of cultural evolution

© Victor Efremenko, 2020

ISBN 978-5-0051-8833-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Introduction

The book attempts to reconstruct the milestones of the evolutionary path that the Primate species Homo sapiens followed to create civilization. The final stage of the evolution of this species was cultural evolution, which turned it, which did not have any significant morphological advantages, into the dominant species on the Planet earth.

This became possible because the final stage of the evolution of Homo sapiens did not occur as the evolution of other species – due to the creation of some morphological advantages (fast legs or sharp fangs) for themselves, but due to behavior modification. Behavior modification became possible with some brain structure that appeared in our ancestors. The evolution of the brain provided, in the long run, great advantages for the species in survival and reproduction.

Upsetting some, I still have to declare that man is not a divine creation, and did not even descend from a monkey, he is an advanced primate, whose behavior is regulated not only by the system of instincts created by genetics, implemented through the structures of the brain, but also by the second system on top of the first genetic, a functional system, but also implemented by brain structures.

In other words, for a person we have a control system with two control loops nested one into the other. Such control systems in regulation theory are called systems with subordinate regulation. The inner loop output serves as the input to the outer loop. In simple words, this means that cultural evolution takes place taking into account the existing morphology and instincts of the species Homo sapiens.

The external control loop is formed by functional brain regulators MEMs, which determine the mentality of a person and are often factors that restrain instinctive (genetic) behavior. But this inhibition is not observed in all cases, not in all individuals, and not always. Therefore, you have to look at a person from two points of view in order to better understand him – from the socio-cultural and biological.

Human societies are populations subject to natural selection, capable of inheriting acquired cultural achievements. Note that a person on a desert island cannot evolve culturally. Only societies can evolve, just as populations evolve in biology, not individuals.

Evolution, including cultural, must have 3 indispensable attributes inherent in the biological evolution of any living object. For biological evolution, these are species variability, selection and inheritance.

Genes provide for variability and inheritance, and Darwinian selection weeds out nonviable specimens. Genes are replicators in biological evolution.

The cultural evolution of social behavior, like any evolution of living things, must also have these attributes.

Since the genes that serve as replicators of the entire biological evolution cannot fix the beneficial changes acquired during life (this is a postulate of genetics), it must be admitted that the observed cultural evolution of a person, apparently, occurs with the help of other replicators (MEMs) and another inheritance mechanism.

It should be mentioned that there is no evolution of culture in itself. Culture is inanimate and cannot evolve. The fading of colors over time in the artist’s painting cannot be called the evolution of culture.

Only the expression «human cultural evolution» makes sense.

We have yet to give a definition of culture, since no one has yet proposed such a definition (adequate).

For the first time, a generalized concept of culture is formulated in the book, mechanisms of human cultural evolution are proposed, where MEMs are replicators, the totality of which is phenotypically manifested as a mentality that creates a psychological portrait of a person, determines the way of his thinking and, ultimately, determines his behavior in specific conditions. In other words, mentality is considered as the phenotype of the entire complex of human MEMs.

This approach to cultural evolution makes it possible to build some models of the behavior of local societies, carefully applying the schemes of population genetics.

Sociology studies the behavior of people in large and small societies. This is done purely empirically. No basis other than philosophical conjectures has been laid as a basis, which is important for the practice of science. The founders of this science began to develop from scratch, not taking into account that Homo sapiens is one of the primate species undergoing a stage of cultural evolution.

Since philosophers have penetrated into this science, they raise as the most important naive, meaningless questions: «Are people able to control the conditions of their own lives, or are their actions a consequence of the influence of external social forces? Is society a product of human action?»

The influence on human behavior of genes, upbringing, education and the social environment is considered differently by different schools of sociologists. But unambiguous answers to these questions can be offered by sociobiology. It is she who should become the basis of sociology in order to fill the desert between biology and sociology.

Human societies (societies) are only biological objects that develop over time under the influence of selection, like all other species of living nature, and inheritance is an integral part of this development. Man and societies are part of biological evolution, which claims that all living objects in nature originated from one original living object.

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

Even Pope John Paul II announced in an appeal to the Catholic Church that the Vatican agreed to transfer Darwin’s evolutionary teachings from the category of hypotheses to the rank of scientific theory. In his speech, the Pope recognized it acceptable to believe that the human body is the result of evolution.

If you recognize these obvious statements, then discussing the turns of the evolutionary path of societies should be based on evolutionary theory, and not philosophical and moral and ethical ideas, because they are different for different people or groups, are adaptations of culture to the situation at certain points in time and therefore change along with the furnishings.

The conclusions, as a result of this type of discussion, will be different by different researchers.

In science, the conclusions drawn by scientists on the basis of the presented experience should be the same. If some scientific theory does not allow making unambiguous conclusions, then the theory is considered unsatisfactory.

For example, if some issues of intracellular development are considered, then the conclusions of American and Russian scientists will be in agreement, but if issues related to social development are considered, i.e. development with the participation of many multicellular organisms of the species Homo sapiens, there is usually no agreement.

No, because the researchers are on different platforms and have different points of view. If we discuss social issues from one universal platform of sociobiology, then the differences can be overcome as a result of discussion. Therefore, I propose a unified platform for discussing social issues. But there are many influential opponents of convergence of views who parasitize on this difference.

Modern man is the result of evolution. This does not mean a call to equate a person with animals, but reminds that all living organisms and even worms have a structure programmed using the same universal genetic code, all have a cellular structure and each cell has a nucleus with a set of genetic material in it…

The difference in behavior between humans and other species is not caused by a person’s upright posture or his ability to work hard. The difference is caused by the presence of an additional, advanced in cultural evolution, regulation system (external regulation loop) that uses the properties of the brain.

Changes in behavior, due to cultural evolution, made the species Homo sapiens the dominant species on the planet, allowed the creation of civilization.

Why do you need to write a book that popularizes biological tools for dealing with social problems of society?

The fact is that now the problems of society are considered from the standpoint of philosophy, humanitarian concepts, and so on. Such a traditional approach was developed in the course of the historical development of man, and this seems to indicate the validity of its application.

Traditions are an important element of the mechanisms of inheritance in cultural evolution, but they cannot be the basis of modern scientific ideas.

The time has passed when I. Newton called his great book with an exposition of mechanics «Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy» (1684—1686). This name is a tradition of deep antiquity. There is no longer any philosophy in his book. Newton combined separate information about mechanical phenomena, partially revealed before him («I stood on the shoulders of giants» wrote Newton) into one integral theory, held together not by philosophical language, but by mathematical one. Later, many naturalists followed this path, refusing to philosophical verbal descriptions of reality.

However, 200 years after Newton, two «wise men» published the «Communist Manifesto» calling, on the basis of some philosophical ideas, to take up the modernization of social relations in human society.

Their philosophical ideas had nothing to do with biological concepts. They believed that human societies resemble plasticine, from which you can sculpt anything. A similar idea of the possibility of constructing social relations according to the wishes of the elite has survived in Russia to this day. These ideas became widespread in different societies, led to bloody revolutions and numerous victims.

The book shows that there is a big difference in biological and engineering design. In biological engineering, there are no drawings or sketches of the final result. Structures are created, but nobody knows the end result. Structures are alive from the moment they appear and remain so during ontogenesis. Responsibility for biological design rests with everyone involved, not with the manager, as in the case of engineering projects.

The process of creating a human body is controlled not by some separate parts of the embryo, but by the system as a whole. A living system must remain alive all the time, without shutdowns for repair or reconstruction. The systems of a multicellular organism have a certain autonomy, they are not controlled from a single center.

States and individual societies, consisting of living people, themselves should be considered as living organisms with their own needs and capabilities. Social life is linked by many successive chains, and breaks in some of them lead to the destruction of parts of the system, which can be fatal for the entire system as a whole. Still, social systems are more resilient than a house of cards. They have some plasticity, adaptability to external influences.

The ruling elites sometimes propose solutions, ostensibly for the benefit of society, to replace individual building blocks with others, believing that social systems can be rebuilt in this way.

But since the systems are alive, even the noble aspirations of reformers who do not take this fact into account can lead to an undesirable result. Specific examples of such unreasonable behavior are considered in the last chapters on the examples of reformatting the Russian Empire.

1. Human, brain, mind

The emergence of Homo sapiens

Somewhere in southern Africa, about 160—180 thousand years ago, another species appeared in the hominid family of a large order of primates, which biologists gave the name Homo sapiens. This species, not distinguished by any physical qualities, as a result of its unusual evolution, became the dominant species on the Planet. The appearance of new species, as well as their disappearance, are ordinary events in the long evolution of living nature, which has been going on for 3.8 billion years. But in this case, a species arose that turned into a person, became the dominant species, affecting the entire ecosystem. In his development, man went beyond the Earth and acquired the ability to destroy all life on Earth with one careless movement.

The uniqueness of the evolution of this species lies in the fact that it began to evolve differently from all other species, adapting to environmental conditions due to morphological changes, i.e. by changing the structure of individual organs. He didn’t grow hair to keep warm in cold climates, he didn’t grow strong claws like those of predators, his legs didn’t become too fast to flee from predators.

In order not to freeze, he built housing and acquired clothing from skins, created tools for labor and hunting, used fire, which was used even before the appearance of this species, by his distant ancestors. He lived in small, friendly collectives, connected by social relations, where he had to communicate a lot, make primitive tools of labor, develop tactics of collective action, thereby ensuring greater security for himself.

As a result of evolutionary development, he acquired a developed language of communication and an advanced mind, which helped him to survive in difficult and hostile conditions. Language and reason, have a common basis, influence each other and determine the direction of evolutionary development.

This evolution of Homo sapiens, evolution through adaptation of behavior, not morphology, has been called human cultural evolution.

The exit from Africa of Homo sapiens and the development of other continents in time is shown on the map:

(http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey)

Homo sapiens originally lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes. Life in tribes requires constant communication. In the presence of a large brain potential, this led to the development of a fairly informative language of communication. Not being endowed with special physical qualities, representatives of the species Homo sapiens were forced to make tools for hunting and everyday life. The genetically determined feature of the brain morphology of this species has created a great potential for the development of the mind. The ancestor’s brain of this species has grown 3 times in 2 million years.

Economic activity contributed to the realization of this potential, and the development of reason increased the effectiveness of all activities.

There is a positive feedback (PIC) between the result of work and the increase in intelligence. The mind increases the efficiency of work, and creative work develops the mind. Such positive feedback processes lead to rapid evolution in this direction.

You can read more about the origin and evolution of man in the book by A. Markov (Evolution of man. In 2 books. 2011). This book is based on research in anthropology, genetics, and evolutionary psychology.

We are not interested in genetics, not biological evolution, but in the unique path of human cultural evolution, which made it possible to create civilization.