Does human culture evolve via natural selection, as our genes do?
Paul Ehrlich talks about his recent study of Polynesian canoes, and whether human culture evolves via natural selection:
Biologists have a pretty good idea of both how flies become resistant to DDT and how humans and primates have diverged over time. That’s because the mechanism underlying these processes is the same. Using evolution we can understand how organisms generally change their stores of genetic information (DNA and RNA), alter their observable characteristics, and diversify.
Posted on 
June 24th, 2008 by 
Simon Greenhill
3 Responses to “Does human culture evolve via natural selection, as our genes do?”
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Email Henry Updates to Me
June 26th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
This study puzzled me a lot. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any mention of a time dimension, which I would think indispensable to any study of evolution. I simply couldn’t understand the methodology well enough to see how or if it managed to dispense with that necessity.
Secondly, they record the presence/absence of certain traits that conflict with each other - ie Tuamotu has recorded presence of all but one of several different ways of attaching ourigger booms:
OB4 - Booms are lashed directly to float
OB5 - Booms are inserted directly into float - absent
OB6 - Booms are both indirectly attached to float
OB7 - Booms are indirectly attached to float w/stanchions overcrossed or lashed against sides of boom
OB8 - Booms are indirectly attached to float by branched and Y connectives
Then they seem to analyse the whole matrix neutrally, and abstractly, so far as I can see. I don’t understand how this can illustrate any trends between islands at all.
I’m interested in the study because I own a ‘pseudo-Polynesian’ style double outrigger banca myself:
http://www.coconutstudio.com/Boats.htm
which, incidentally, shows the extreme conservatism of traditional boat builders:
- The current, motorised, traditional banca has a propellor shaft that leads down to below the keel line. This means that every time you scrape over a coral head, the propellor falls off and you have to go overboard and retrieve it. This is even more embarrassing when you’re out at sea, and drive over a semi-submerged log, and can’t retrieve it. Not a single local fisherman has adopted a skeg, or propellor protector, yet they regularly go halfway to Guam to fish.
- Just as regularly, one or two of them get lost. Those that do can’t pass on the reason for their loss to others. Last year, I rescued a stranded fishing banca. Their petrol supply was destroyed by fire because one of the fishermen was smoking while the other topped up the tank.
- Three months later, I came across the same boat, and the same pair, in the same place, stationary, so I went over to them again. One was refilling the tank, and the other was holding the funnel. And smoking.
- When I first wrote that web page, I thought I was describing a local tradition, handed down from time immemorial. These traditional boats have only been in this town (on Siargao Island, Philippines) since the 1970s,when the mayor imported some Boholanos to teach his townspeople how to fish outside the lagoon, which was getting a bit empty. Before that they used only dugouts, without outriggers.
I’m also sending this same query to Paul Ehrlich. If I get a reply, I’ll post it here.
June 29th, 2008 at 2:57 am
[...] by Stephen Shennan has been published in the Annual Review of Anthropology journal. The second, this column in Seed Magazine by Paul Ehrlich — who recently published a research paper in [...]
June 30th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the comment (& as always, my apologies for my tardy reply). I agree that this paper does leave a number of questions unresolved. I see this study as a very promising start - there’s plenty of work to be done here, and I know that a number of groups are following this up.
I’d be very interested in seeing what Ehrlich has to say on this, if he replies. You might want to take a look at this interview that he did on this topic recently.
–Simon