Human Evolution Cultural Variation and Term Paper

This postmodern view of culture is applicable in the 20th century analyses and discussions introduced by Boyd and Richerson. In effect, the first assumption explicates how culture brings forth history, and in history, "qualitative different trajectories" occur: "...the dynamics of the system must be path dependent; isolated populations or societies must tend to diverge even when they start from the same initial condition and evolve in similar environments" (186).

After establishing the potential, crucial role that culture and generally, history, plays in the human evolution, Boyd and Richerson then explicated on the interdependence of science and culture in the evolutionary process. The authors posited, as mentioned earlier in the introduction, that culture induces the evolutionary process in the same way science does.

According to the authors, evolutionary process is influenced by "cultural analogs," enumerated as random forces, natural selection, and decision-making forces. Random forces are considered "chance transmissions" that may have potentially changed a particular culture in a specific time period, while natural selection is the process through which "cultural variation" occurs, in which the dominant culture prevails and survives over minor cultures. Lastly, decision-making forces are cultural analogs that input Boyd and Richerson's focus on human behavior: any variation in human individual behavior actually alters or modifies the nature of a particular culture (182-3).

These cultural analogs demonstrate the manner in which, like biological mutations and variations, cultural change happens in human society. It is important to note that in explaining the process of cultural change as a precursor to the evolutionary process, Boyd and Richerson focused on the role that behavior plays in influencing, this time, the nature of culture in human society. The authors warned that in exploring human behavior as part of the evolutionary process, culture must not be construed as an embodiment of human behavior as it occurred in a specific time period. This is most particularly relevant in discussing how humans evolved behaviorally, from being aggressive to 'domesticated' rational animals, creating a complex organization that we call human society (Walker, 2003:382).In discussing culture and its relationship with the evolutionary process, it becomes apparent that the authors, more than anything, would like to focus on a narrower topic: discovering the evolution of human behavior, which influenced culture and biological factors that became catalysts for the evolutionary process.

Acerbi's (2006) analysis of the relationship between culture and the evolutionary process reflected Boyd and Richerson's findings almost twenty years ago. In the researcher's study, it was found out that "the evolutionary process needs two mechanisms to operate: a mechanism of selective reproduction and a mechanism that constantly adds new variability." This new variability are the cultural analogs, which act as factors that intervene with the development of society as a collective group of humans, affecting the social structure and functions that defined societies before, and continuously influence societies of today. Insights into these findings generated the following important implication into the authors' study, proving that more than just an improvement of research methodology and adding more information to scientific and anthropological knowledge, the discussions and analyses in "Culture and the Evolutionary Process" aims to uncover explanations and generate understanding of how humans and human society came about, and continues to develop in the present (198):

The stratification of human societies into privileged elites and disadvantaged commoners derives from the ability of elites to control high-quality resources and/or to exploit commoners using strategies that are similar to competitive and predatory strategies in nature.

Bibliography

Acerbi, a. (2006). "Cultural transmission between and within generations." Journal of Artificial Societies & Social Stimulation, Vol. 9, Issue 1.

Boyd, R. And P. Richerson. (1988). "How Microevolutionary Processes Give Rise to History." In Culture and the Evolutionary Process. In History and Evolution. M. Nitecki (Ed.). NY: University of New York Press.

Hanson, F. (2005). "Culture against society." Society, Vol. 42, Issue 5.

Walker, C.E.….....