How Does Culture Influence Human Evolution?

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Culture has been a powerful selective force over the course of human evolution. Culture is defined as “a set of learned behaviours transmitted from one generation to the next through learning and not by biological and genetic means” (Lewis, Jurmain,& Kilgore, 2013, p. 433). In a concept known as biocultural evolution, “biology makes culture possible and developing culture further influences the direction of biological evolution” (Lewis et al., 2013, p. 432). Three specific examples of the selective force of culture are the cooperative sharing of essential resources, symbolically based communication, and the use of objects as tools.
Humans have been shown to be the only animals that systematically share food and other essential resources. Sustained cooperative sharing of food influenced the brain size of early members of the genus Homo. Because the brain takes up so much energy, development rates decrease as the size of the brain increases. Because of this, reproductive rate is reduced because the mother has to spend more of her time and …show more content…

In particular, the sharing of food, use of language, and use of fire and stone tools have all had a big impact as selective forces for humans. Most of our society today would not have been achieved without these cultural adaptations. Things like technology and the wide specialization of skills and knowledge that we have would not be at the sophisticated level that it is today. Without language, strong social groups, and the discovery of stone tools and weapons, our biological evolution would not have had as much selective force to lead us to where we are today. Historically, we have dealt with physical changes through many ways, most noticeably through the race model, which differentiates people based on their phenotypes. Religion and hierarchies is how we have dealt with our social changes, and our evolutionary changes have given us an anthropocentric view of

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