Protected: Chapter 8. History as Cultural Evolution
Chapter Summary
Human beings alone among the great apes have a sense of history and that it matters. Our past is relevant to how we became the dominant animal and how we treat one another and our environment. Our written history can help us to understand past human behavior and present circumstances, and perhaps design a better future.
Groups, institutions, and societies can take similar or divergent cultural paths as a result of macroevolutionary or microevolutionary factors. Macroevolutionary factors, first described by Montesquieu in the eighteenth century, are constraints on or enablers of behaviors arising from external resource or geographic circumstances, such as climate, amount of arable land, or an adjacent ocean. Microevolutionary factors, which may or may not themselves be cultural, depend on the behavior of human individuals: their motives, abilities, and actions. Some individuals wield enormous influence and can change the course of cultural evolution. Micro factors can operate on a very small scale, such as a small group or a family’s activities, or on a much larger scale, as when a national leader makes a crucial decision during wartime.
An example of the action of both micro- and macroevolutionary factors was the introduction, in the nineteenth century, of smallpox vaccination into Japan, a nation that until then was both physically and politically isolated. In the twentieth century, the microevolutionary actions of some influential leaders in the United States reshaped transportation and settlement patterns into leapfrog suburbs connected by freeways, thereby constraining people’s movements and social contacts over generations, a macroeveolutionary influence that has also contributed to much environmental deterioration, including climate change.
The biological and physical environments that people find themselves in can be broad determinants of historical patterns, as Jared Diamond points out in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Such factors may have shaped the cultural trajectories of early human groups after they left Africa and seem to explain many cultural differences seen today. But many other differences are not clearly related to such macroevolutionary factors, and still others may be due to a mix of both micro and macro factors.
The writing of history began in the fifth century BC in Greece with Herodotus, who traveled widely in the ancient world and recorded what he observed. Yet he also described myths and stories, making his work seemingly a transition from the oral histories and myths of preliterate societies. Thucydides, a little later, wrote more analytically and objectively and sought explanations for wars and other events in a more modern fashion. Various schools of history have since evolved, each focusing on different patterns that they recognized or emphasized, such as ideas, conflicts among ruling classes, economic factors, or the achievements and leadership of great men.
One school, the Annales, in the mid-twentieth century focused on the context of everyday life in societies and features that persist over time, such as geographic relationships, economic arrangements, agricultural practices, demographics, and the like. One member of the school, Fernand Braudel, saw history operating on three time scales: the short term of battles, elections, and fads; the mid term of cyclical processes over decades, such as dominance of political parties; and the longue durée, stretching over centuries and including an area’s geography, flora and fauna, diets, and trade systems. In this context, the most important macroevolutionary event in history was the agricultural revolution, which changed everything from diets and birthrates to social structures and environmental impacts.
Another form of broad-scale history is the study of technological evolution, led by George Basalla, who showed that technological innovations almost never occur in response to some fundamental need. Human beings could have gotten along without technology, but cultural evolution and our history would have been quite different without it. Human desires—aspirations, imagination, creativity—seem to be the main source of invention. Many technological changes are refinements or improvements of already existing artifacts. This continuity of innovation in a way resembles genetic evolution, especially because in both cases the environment selects the variants that persist and lead to new kinds of technologies or organisms. Cultures, however, may vary in their receptivity to innovations, sometimes to their detriment, sometimes to their benefit. The concept of technological progress should be used with caution, since many so-called technological advances may or may not be beneficial—for example, more powerful nuclear weapons or faster but more polluting aircraft.
History is full of value judgments about cultures, but since no significant genetic differences in ability among peoples have been found, it is likely that different historical paths are mainly due to cultural and macroevolutionary differences. Given our society’s penchant to promote its own superiority, we should look carefully at the criteria employed. The United States may win on some indices of superiority today, such as military capability or per capita income, but lose to others on such measures as life expectancy, adult literacy, and income equity. Claims of progress in cultural evolution are as unproven as claims of progress in genetic evolution.
Human beings have evolved cultures that can largely persist over many generations; thus the forces that shape us are partly of our own making. Paradoxically, cultural “stickiness”—resistance to change—seems highly beneficial in many situations yet in other cases can lead to disaster, as becomes more evident in times of cultural stress, such as war or environmental catastrophe. Understanding causes and consequences in history clearly requires analysis at many levels. Large-scale interpretations through cultural evolution so far have been tentative and controversial, since they involve millions of people and their numerous institutions and diverse norms. The resulting emergent complexity makes identifying the essential driving forces of events difficult. Moreover, historians are embedded in their own cultures and influenced by them in their interpretations. What seems to be needed is a unified theory of the various mechanisms of cultural change.
Key Terms
- George Basalla
- Fernand Braudel
- Cultural macroevolution
- Cultural microevolution
- Cultural stickiness
- Emergent complexity
- Herodotus
- Ideation
- Montesquieu
- Technological evolution
- Thucydides
Discussion Questions
- What distinction do the Ehrlichs make between cultural macroevolution and cultural microevolution, and which is a more important factor in history?
- What are some instances in which cultural microevolutionary factors can affect macroevolutionary forces?
- What is the relationship between history and cultural evolution?
- What evidence supports the view that observed differences in historical trajectories are rooted in culture, not genetics? What other factors might be in play?
Further Study
Subscribe
Order
