Tssipa
04-06-2005, 09:37 PM
There are questions in this forum that stir issues about cultural differences. I read one interesting article in Discover Magazine and thoought that it might address some of these questions.
Article: Behaviorist seeks what divides us: human cultural groups have behaved as if they were different species.
Mark Pagel, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Reading in England, was interviewed by Discover Magazine writer.
Discover Question: Is there anything you've learned about human behavior that surprises you?
Pagel's Answer: What surprises me that most about studying human behavior from an evolutionary perspective is that humans, despite being genetically quite homogenous, nevertheless achieve a diversity of behaviors and cultural practices and languages that rivals anything on Earth. Human dultural diversity is vast; the range of cultural practices, beliefs, and languages that we speak is vast.
Discover Q: Why did humans diversify so much?
Pagel's Answer: What drives the separation of groups of people into subgroups is the desire to control resources. We begin with a single culture, and over time the number of individuals within that culture expands. At some point, some of the individuals will say, "Well, if we banded together, we could garner some territory and we could make a go of it on our own." Now we have two groups who are competing for the same resources. So they set up territories. In effect, they're setting up fences and saying, "Don't cross that."
Discover Q: So the groups become different once the fences bewteen them are up?
Pagel's A: Those groups are free to diverge in their beliefs and their behavioral practices and so on. So I think the driving force for cultural evolution is this desire for groups to be splitting off and separating and forming subgroups insofar as the environment will allow it. We see great cultural diversity and large numbers of cultures per unit area in regions of the world in which the einvironment is really rich. In the tropics, for example, there is a lot of biomass, so there's a lot to eat and a lot to make shelters from.
Discover Q: You've said that implication of cultural separation is that we have an innate wariness of strangers.
Pagel's A: People have seized on that as a statement of jingoism or bigotry, but we're trying to understand how you get the patterns of cultural diversity that you really do get. Human cultural groups have behaved as if they were different species that actively exclude each other, and cultures do have a wariness of strangers. I think it may be a deep-seated part of our psychological makeup. It isn't necessarily something that we want to promote or be proud of, but it is something we ought to be aware of.
Discover Q: If different culture groups keep to themselves and reinforce barriers, why are humans still so genetically similiar?
Pagel's A: We're very young species. We may all descend from a very small number of individuals who lived somewhere between 100,000 abd 300,000 years ago. We're really just getting out of the starting blocks--this may explain why we're so bad at being what we are--so there hasn't been enough time for us really to diverge genetically.
****I think, in the above stated answer Pagel is implying that our behavior evolved much faster than our genes****
Discover Q: Will we? (become genetically differend species)
Pagel's A: It's tempting to speculate that we were on the road to evolving into separate species. There's absolutely no reason to rule it out. We never got that far. Instead, we were so good at developing mass transport and communication and moving around the world that now we are sharing genes at a high enough level that we will homogenize more.
Pagel, also stated that because nations are mixing, certain languages become extinct. As a result people will lose their unique ways of thinking, that different languages tend to reinforce. He said that language reinforces cultural differences.
He also thinks that eventually cultures will merge and people will homogenize and will start to look the same, BUT it will be a slow process as long as there is cultural choice and financial choice and economic choice.
****I think he makes sense and does not only explain cultural issues, but human behavior in general.****
Article: Behaviorist seeks what divides us: human cultural groups have behaved as if they were different species.
Mark Pagel, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Reading in England, was interviewed by Discover Magazine writer.
Discover Question: Is there anything you've learned about human behavior that surprises you?
Pagel's Answer: What surprises me that most about studying human behavior from an evolutionary perspective is that humans, despite being genetically quite homogenous, nevertheless achieve a diversity of behaviors and cultural practices and languages that rivals anything on Earth. Human dultural diversity is vast; the range of cultural practices, beliefs, and languages that we speak is vast.
Discover Q: Why did humans diversify so much?
Pagel's Answer: What drives the separation of groups of people into subgroups is the desire to control resources. We begin with a single culture, and over time the number of individuals within that culture expands. At some point, some of the individuals will say, "Well, if we banded together, we could garner some territory and we could make a go of it on our own." Now we have two groups who are competing for the same resources. So they set up territories. In effect, they're setting up fences and saying, "Don't cross that."
Discover Q: So the groups become different once the fences bewteen them are up?
Pagel's A: Those groups are free to diverge in their beliefs and their behavioral practices and so on. So I think the driving force for cultural evolution is this desire for groups to be splitting off and separating and forming subgroups insofar as the environment will allow it. We see great cultural diversity and large numbers of cultures per unit area in regions of the world in which the einvironment is really rich. In the tropics, for example, there is a lot of biomass, so there's a lot to eat and a lot to make shelters from.
Discover Q: You've said that implication of cultural separation is that we have an innate wariness of strangers.
Pagel's A: People have seized on that as a statement of jingoism or bigotry, but we're trying to understand how you get the patterns of cultural diversity that you really do get. Human cultural groups have behaved as if they were different species that actively exclude each other, and cultures do have a wariness of strangers. I think it may be a deep-seated part of our psychological makeup. It isn't necessarily something that we want to promote or be proud of, but it is something we ought to be aware of.
Discover Q: If different culture groups keep to themselves and reinforce barriers, why are humans still so genetically similiar?
Pagel's A: We're very young species. We may all descend from a very small number of individuals who lived somewhere between 100,000 abd 300,000 years ago. We're really just getting out of the starting blocks--this may explain why we're so bad at being what we are--so there hasn't been enough time for us really to diverge genetically.
****I think, in the above stated answer Pagel is implying that our behavior evolved much faster than our genes****
Discover Q: Will we? (become genetically differend species)
Pagel's A: It's tempting to speculate that we were on the road to evolving into separate species. There's absolutely no reason to rule it out. We never got that far. Instead, we were so good at developing mass transport and communication and moving around the world that now we are sharing genes at a high enough level that we will homogenize more.
Pagel, also stated that because nations are mixing, certain languages become extinct. As a result people will lose their unique ways of thinking, that different languages tend to reinforce. He said that language reinforces cultural differences.
He also thinks that eventually cultures will merge and people will homogenize and will start to look the same, BUT it will be a slow process as long as there is cultural choice and financial choice and economic choice.
****I think he makes sense and does not only explain cultural issues, but human behavior in general.****