The Role of Human Culture In Natural Selection

gollum123 writes with this excerpt from the NY Times: "... for the last 20,000 years or so, people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution. The force is human culture, broadly defined as any learned behavior, including technology. The evidence of its activity is the more surprising because culture has long seemed to play just the opposite role. Biologists have seen it as a shield that protects people from the full force of other selective pressures, since clothes and shelter dull the bite of cold and farming helps build surpluses to ride out famine. Because of this buffering action, culture was thought to have blunted the rate of human evolution, or even brought it to a halt, in the distant past. Many biologists are now seeing the role of culture in a quite different light. Although it does shield people from other forces, culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes, like new diets. And this interaction works more quickly than other selective forces, 'leading some practitioners to argue that gene-culture co-evolution could be the dominant mode of human evolution.'"

Comments

Domesticating Sheep

[MrBrklyn]

Sometimes the obvious just sits in front of your nose and you can't see it, even with a room full of PhD's. Mankind domesticated Sheep, Dogs, Cattle, Horses, pigs, and Chickens, all resulting in a diverse array of sub-types and phenotypes. Low and Behold, the very first species that we domesticates was Mankind itself...

Why do they think that Water Buffalo and Elephants can drink from Savana Mud and water holes, but humans would die in if they did so weeks...

Wow...mankind's evolution is influenced by mankind's culture and breeding selections. Big surprise but it is OBVIOUS. Even birds self select for color and such..

This was hotly discussed with the OLPC debates and I'll quote this:

In response to many of the questions regarding the changes in the
OLPC project, and specifically the decision to base the project at
this juncture to a Microsoft Operating System, proponents of this
change have come out swinging against Free Software developers who
have worked for the current Free Interface, code named Sugar. A
large segment of the critique of the against Free Software developers
like Bender is that they have put their "Open Source" agenda above the
welfare of the project. Others claim that the "Open Source" advocates
should be pleased with the what has already been done and that the
project as it stands can either be relaunched or has already met
goals.

The problem, though, is that in many ways, the marketing and financial
positioning of the OLPC program is harder to develop then the hardware
and software. And the goals that have been met are small in light of
the original mission of the OLPC project.

An operating system is more than a commodity. It becomes the looking
glass that develops how the user thinks and it literally shapes
the mind of it's users. A system which is at it's core designed to
disenfranchise users from the learning experience, especially in how
the user views the software itself through learned expectations, and
forces information access through monopolistic channels and filters,
undermines the development of critical thinking skills. In geek terms,
the operating system reprograms the end user. The Microsoft operating
system is designed to do so from the ground up. It is in fact the only
intended use of the Microsoft Windows Operating System franchise.

The interaction between technology on human and societal development
dates to the beginning of civilization, if not even before that.
One interesting scholarly article on the topic which is archived at
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources/technology_changes_how_we_think.txt
by Robin Wilson explores how the Gutenberg printing printing press causes
an explosion of mathematical usage and development, and how a large part
of that was developed by the standardization of mathematical symbols
for universal communication and expression.

" Johann Gutenbergâ(TM)s invention of the printing press (around 1440)
revolutionised mathematics, enabling classic mathematical works to be
widely available for the first time. Previously, scholarly works, such
as the classical texts of Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius had been
available only in manuscript form, but the printed versions made these
works much more widely available.

At first the new books were printed in Latin or Greek for the scholar,
and many scholarly editions appeared. The earliest printed version
of Euclid's Elements, published in Venice in 1482, and there is an
attractive 1492 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest. Apollonius's Conics
appeared in 1537, and seven years later the works of Archimedes were
published in both Latin and Greek, and there was a celebrated edition
of Diophantus's Arithmetic in 1621, reissued in 1670, with the Greek
text, a Latin translation by Bachet, and comments by Fermat, including
his famous marginal comment on the 'last

Re:Religious Neanderthals

[ElectricTurtle]

Your analogy is not parallel. A system of measuring distance is objective. A system of measuring intelligence, though it may try to be objective, cannot wholly succeed at that effort.

Although you attempt to lambaste me, I am not afraid to say it proves what I am saying. I have an IQ of 144, but I forgot Mensa was not an acronym. IQ is a rough estimate of capacity, it doesn't prove value in any specific, discrete way.