6.17.2004

Call me E.O. Wilson

Have you ever thought about culture, why it is unique to humans, and why it exists in the first place? Being of a relatively scientific ilk, I have come up with this answer, within the framework of evolutionary theory:
Mammals learn skills and strategies from their parents. Think of the kitten that learns to hunt for mice by watching a parent (cats who haven't watched a parent hunt generally don't learn how to hunt), or baby hyena who learns to avoid lions from its mother. Communication of learned information from parent to child, generation to generation, is adaptive and helps the species survive. Humans pass this kind of information too when they teach their kids to look both ways before crossing the road, or how to do their laundry. But humans are much more sophisticated than other mammals. And what is culture but the body of what has been thought, said and done in the arts, sciences, civilization etc? Culture must then be a body of transmissible information, albeit a very sophisticated human version of it, which is passed from one human generation to the next.

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