Culture can be defined as many things, but it is never a static entity; it changes and evolves over time and through the generations. That is not to say that all cultures adapt well or that all adaptations are beneficial. This paper will briefly discuss cultural adaptation and its effects. Miller et al. (2010) defines culture as people’s learned and shared beliefs (p.4). However it can also be said that culture is the cumulative knowledge of a people, such as the use of fire technology by the natives of Northern Alberta and Northern Australia as described by Lewis (1989). In both instances fire was used as a tool to increase the people’s ability to survive in an environment, without which, survival would have been much more difficult or perhaps impossible. The knowledge of how to wield the tool of fire effectively was not that of only one individual, it was a knowledge held by multiple people within the society. It was also knowledge that did not come into being suddenly and completely; it was learned and added to over time and generations by individuals and their experiences. In other words, it was adapted and evolved in response to changes in the environment and the culture’s cumulative knowledge. “Culture allows the relatively rapid accumulation of better strategies for exploiting local environment” (Boyd and Richerson, p.16) and the use of fire technology is merely one example of how cultures adapt to their environments and increase their cumulative knowledge. Another example would be the adaptation of Chinampas farming by the Aztecs, which transformed them from a small tribe exiled on a few islands in a lake, into an empire that survived for centuries and covered most of what is now modern Mexico (Coe, 1964). Culture a... ... middle of paper ... ...1): 90-98. DOI:10.1038/scientificamerican0764-90. [online] Diamond, J. 2008, October. Jared Diamond: Why do Societies Collapse? [Video File] Retrieved from: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse.htm Fegan, Brian. 2003. “Plundering the seas.” Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003: Retrieved from: http://www.insideindonesia.org/feature-editions/plundering-the-sea Lewis, Henry T. 1989. “A Parable of Fire: Hunter-Gatherers in Canada and Australia.” In Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Collection of Essays, pp. 11-19; 77-77. R. E. Johannes, ed. Cambridge, UK: IUCN Publication Services. [PDF] Retrieved from: http://wcs.lms.athabascau.ca/file.php/106/PDFs/ANTH275_Lewis_1989.pdf Miller, Barbara D., & Penny Van Esterik, & John Van Esterik. 2010. Cultural Anthropology, 4th Canadian edition. Toronto: Pearson Education Canada Inc.
Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize Winning, National Best Selling book Guns, Germs and Steel, summarizes his book by saying the following: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Guns, Germs and Steel is historical literature that documents Jared Diamond's views on how the world as we know it developed. However, is his thesis that environmental factors contribute so greatly to the development of society and culture valid? Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History is the textbook used for this class and it poses several different accounts of how society and culture developed that differ from Diamond's claims. However, neither Diamond nor Traditions are incorrect. Each poses varying, yet true, accounts of the same historical events. Each text chose to analyze history in a different manner. Not without flaws, Jared Diamond makes many claims throughout his work, and provides numerous examples and evidence to support his theories. In this essay, I will summarize Jared Diamond's accounts of world history and evolution of culture, and compare and contrast it with what I have learned using the textbook for this class.
Robbins, R. H. (2014). Cultural anthropology: a problem-based approach (Second Canadian ed.). Itasca: F.E. Peacock.
“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among people themselves.”(Diamond 25) This statement is the thesis for Jared Diamond’s book Guns Germs and Steel the Fates of Human Societies.
Robbins Burling, David F. Armstrong, Ben G. Blount, Catherine A. Callaghan, Mary Lecron Foster, Barbara J. King, Sue Taylor Parker, Osamu Sakura, William C. Stokoe, Ron Wallace, Joel Wallman, A. Whiten, Sherman Wilcox and Thomas Wynn. Current Anthropology, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Feb., 1993), pp. 25-53
Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 14th Edition William A. Havilland; Harald E. L. Prins; Bunny McBride; Dana Walrath Published by Wadsworth, Cengage Learning (2014)
The Neolithic Period, which includes events from 12,000 years ago, is one of the most important revolutions to occur in history. The Neolithic lifestyle was established first in the Middle East, and then later in the Yellow river basin in China, which then spread over the years into the Western Hemisphere. During this time period, the domestication of plants and animals and the development of cities was starting to become more prominent and well known to many different civilizations across many different countries. It consisted of many changes in human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of farming and settlement, which supported a larger population. As civilizations expanded, so did traditions and techniques. A major technological and cultural change to modern ways of thinking and acting began in Western Europe, and from these beginning new approaches to science and law spread quickly around the world. It spread to countries, causing more people to become aware of when and where to properly irrigate a crop, which type of area had the best security, and other common living strategies. Surely enough, many years later, traditions are the same as they were thousands of years ago. Although traditions may not have changed, the way people think about their God and religions have changed from culture to culture. Throughout the years, men and women from the Middle West completely changed their relationship from nature, to a more independent lifestyle; human beings learned to have more control over their lives.
Schultz, Emily A. & Lavenda, Robert H. 2005, Cultural Anthropology, 6th edn, Oxford University Press, New York, Chapter 3: Fieldwork.
The author describes how ingenuity and technology changed social organization in early civilizations. Why was this “one of the major turning points in the social history of humankind?” How does this alteration of social structure reflect our modern societies? Give specific examples from your own culture to demonstrate how this change persists today.
Culture often means an appreciation of the finer things in life; however, culture brings members of a society together. We have a sense of belonging because we share similar beliefs, values, and attitudes about what’s right and wrong. As a result, culture changes as people adapt to their surroundings. According to Bishop Donald, “let it begin with me and my children and grandchildren” (211). Among other things, culture influences what you eat; how you were raised and will raise your own children? If, when, and whom you will marry; how you make and spend money. Truth is culture is adaptive and always changing over time because
Jared Diamond, in his movie “ Germs, Guns, and Steel” explained that civilizations that were able to domesticate animals and plants, were mor...
The New Stone Age got more advance when people adapted to a new change. Although they were limited, th...
From the frozen tundra of the arctic north to the arid deserts of sub-Saharan Africa – humans not only survive, but even thrive in some of the most extreme and remote environments on the planet. This is a testament to the remarkable capacity for adaptation possessed by our species. Each habitat places different stressors on human populations, and they must adapt in order to mitigate them. That is, adaptation is the process by which man and other organisms become better suited to their environments. These adaptations include not only physical changes like the larger lung capacities observed in high altitude natives but also cultural and behavioral adjustments such as traditional Inuit clothing styles, which very effectively retain heat but discourage deadly hyperthermia-inducing sweat in Arctic climates. Indeed, it seems this later mechanism of adaptation is often much more responsible for allowing humans to populate such a wide variety of habitats, spanning all seven continents, rather than biological mechanisms. Of course, not all adaptations are entirely beneficial, and in fact may be maladaptive, particularly behavior adaptations and highly specialized physical adaptations in periods of environmental change. Because people rely heavily on social learning, maladaptaptive behaviors such as sedentarization and over-eating – both contributing to obesity – are easily transmitted from person to person and culture to culture, as seen in the Inuit’s adoption of American cultural elements.
Kedia, Satish, and Willigen J. Van (2005). Applied Anthropology: Domains of Application. Westport, Conn: Praeger. pp. 16, 150.
Anthropologists define the term culture in a variety of ways, but there are certain shared features of the definition that virtually all anthropologists agree on. Culture is a shared, socially transmitted knowledge and behavior. The key features of this definition of culture are as follows. 1) Culture is shared among the members of that particular society or group. Thus, people share a common cultural identity, meaning that they recognize themselves and their culture's traditions as distinct from other people and other traditions. 2) Culture is socially transmitted from others while growing up in a certain environment, group, or society. The transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation by means of social learning is referred to as enculturation or socialization. 3) Culture profoundly affects the knowledge, actions, and feelings of the people in that particular society or group. This concept is often referred to as cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment of that particular culture.
Studies that depicted local communities and their knowledge as primitive, simple and static are now countered by a rapidly expanding database generated by both biological and social scientists that describe the complexity and sophistication of many indigenous natural resource management systems" (Waren1992).