UndercoverElephant
Pachyderm of a Thousand Faces
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2002
- Messages
- 9,058
Darwinian Archaeology or Cultural Evolution is the application of Darwinian principles to the study of human cultural behaviour. It defines "culture" as socially-transmissible information leading to fitness-enhancing behaviour. It claims that such fitness-enhancing behaviour will become "memes", for want of a better word, which will then spread and become established. By such methods it seeks to explain the cultural development that has occured during human history, and in doing so it treads on the toes of all sorts of other disciplines - including archaeology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy and theology. The problem, IMO, is in the definition of culture.
There are many Darwinian Archaeologies, prompting a book of that title in 1996 by Herbert Maschner. As things stand, there is no agreement as to the appropriate relationship between Darwinism and archaeology. At least one of the contributors (Graves-Brown) denies that Darwinism is useful at all. Others take examples from biology and attempt to apply them to culture (e.g. Cullen and Fletcher comparing artefacts to viruses, parasitising humans). The rest of the essays describe a great variety of different approaches and techniques. In the words of one reviewer:
“Maschner's collection illustrates powerfully why [the prediction that evolutionary archaeology is poised to emerge as a coherent research program] is premature. The essays that comprise it reveal an astonishing amount of variation among the visions their authors entertain about the proper role of Darwinian ideas in archaeological theory.”
Ten years after the publication of this anthology, Maschner is still claiming that a unified Darwinian Archaeology is not only difficult, but undesirable as well:
My own gripe with this will be all too predictable to those familiar with my posts....
Homo Sapiens is an evolutionary anomaly, Culture is the key.
In attempting to provide Darwinian explanations for things like altruistic behaviour or the development of religion, there may be a tendency to oversimplify some of the most complex and most interesting aspects of human culture and human behaviour.
We are something of an evolutionary anomaly, and what makes us different is a specifically human sort of culture. Perhaps in this respect the most important artefacts to have surfaced so far are the earliest forms of expressive art: lumps of red ochre found in the Blombos Cave, on the Southern Cape coast, which have patterns inscribed on the surface. These are dated to 77,000 years ago, significantly predating the earliest rock art.
If the term “culture” is used to refer to the earliest oldawan lithic technologies (the first stone tools) then it must also be valid to extend this term back to all animal behaviours which are transmitted from one generation to the next by observation/teaching. This would even include such things as cats teaching their young how to avoid detection when hunting. (see: “Cats and Their Culture” by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas).
Perhaps we need to distinguish more clearly between “culture” understood as the passing-on of survival-based information such as how to make a hand-axe and how to avoid detection when hunting and “culture” understood as the information leading to aspects of human behaviour which single us out as the evolutionary anomaly we are – those behaviours which are associated with self-consciousness and the existential questions it drives humans to ask themselves. The former stretches way back into the mists of evolutionary history, the latter is unique to humans. It is this anomalous behaviour for which a purely Darwinian explanation is the most difficult and most controversial of all – like the willingness of humans to sacrifice their own lives in defence of a moral conviction or an ideology, or the power and persistence of religious belief. Transmitted cultural information is necessary for the existence of these things, but any Darwinian explanations demand the omnipresence of personal gain as the originating causal factor of all behaviour. Many critics would reject this as ‘biological determinism” and claim that humans are capable of genuine altruism. Humans have both the capacity for reason, and to choose to act morally, based on that reason, even in the total absence of any personal gain whatsoever. Humans therefore have at least the potential for free will. In other words, even if it were metaphysically possible for animals to have free will they would not be able to exploit it because doing so requires the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong (morally) and then take the "right" action even if it conflicts with personal self-interest and therefore evolutionary "fitness". I do not believe there is a valid evolutionary explanation for this. This is not offered as a falsification of evolutionary theory but a claim that it cannot fully account for human culture and human behaviour, especially regarding the altruistic/moral behaviour that is characteristic of humans alone.
Many of the arguments surrounding cultural evolution are turf wars – and not merely the turf wars between archaeologists and evolutionary biologists that emerge in Maschner’s anthology. In the case of Darwinian explanations for altruistic behaviour, the problem is that these theories disregard the unresolved philosophical problems regarding determinism and free will, inevitably leading to a turf war both with philosophy and almost every form of religion. Such explanations involve a brute relegation of religion to a psychological crutch or social engineering and IMHO this is a failure to provide a full philosophical, anthropological or psychological account of either altruism or religion.
There are many Darwinian Archaeologies, prompting a book of that title in 1996 by Herbert Maschner. As things stand, there is no agreement as to the appropriate relationship between Darwinism and archaeology. At least one of the contributors (Graves-Brown) denies that Darwinism is useful at all. Others take examples from biology and attempt to apply them to culture (e.g. Cullen and Fletcher comparing artefacts to viruses, parasitising humans). The rest of the essays describe a great variety of different approaches and techniques. In the words of one reviewer:
“Maschner's collection illustrates powerfully why [the prediction that evolutionary archaeology is poised to emerge as a coherent research program] is premature. The essays that comprise it reveal an astonishing amount of variation among the visions their authors entertain about the proper role of Darwinian ideas in archaeological theory.”
Ten years after the publication of this anthology, Maschner is still claiming that a unified Darwinian Archaeology is not only difficult, but undesirable as well:
My own gripe with this will be all too predictable to those familiar with my posts....
Homo Sapiens is an evolutionary anomaly, Culture is the key.
In attempting to provide Darwinian explanations for things like altruistic behaviour or the development of religion, there may be a tendency to oversimplify some of the most complex and most interesting aspects of human culture and human behaviour.
We are something of an evolutionary anomaly, and what makes us different is a specifically human sort of culture. Perhaps in this respect the most important artefacts to have surfaced so far are the earliest forms of expressive art: lumps of red ochre found in the Blombos Cave, on the Southern Cape coast, which have patterns inscribed on the surface. These are dated to 77,000 years ago, significantly predating the earliest rock art.
If the term “culture” is used to refer to the earliest oldawan lithic technologies (the first stone tools) then it must also be valid to extend this term back to all animal behaviours which are transmitted from one generation to the next by observation/teaching. This would even include such things as cats teaching their young how to avoid detection when hunting. (see: “Cats and Their Culture” by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas).
Perhaps we need to distinguish more clearly between “culture” understood as the passing-on of survival-based information such as how to make a hand-axe and how to avoid detection when hunting and “culture” understood as the information leading to aspects of human behaviour which single us out as the evolutionary anomaly we are – those behaviours which are associated with self-consciousness and the existential questions it drives humans to ask themselves. The former stretches way back into the mists of evolutionary history, the latter is unique to humans. It is this anomalous behaviour for which a purely Darwinian explanation is the most difficult and most controversial of all – like the willingness of humans to sacrifice their own lives in defence of a moral conviction or an ideology, or the power and persistence of religious belief. Transmitted cultural information is necessary for the existence of these things, but any Darwinian explanations demand the omnipresence of personal gain as the originating causal factor of all behaviour. Many critics would reject this as ‘biological determinism” and claim that humans are capable of genuine altruism. Humans have both the capacity for reason, and to choose to act morally, based on that reason, even in the total absence of any personal gain whatsoever. Humans therefore have at least the potential for free will. In other words, even if it were metaphysically possible for animals to have free will they would not be able to exploit it because doing so requires the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong (morally) and then take the "right" action even if it conflicts with personal self-interest and therefore evolutionary "fitness". I do not believe there is a valid evolutionary explanation for this. This is not offered as a falsification of evolutionary theory but a claim that it cannot fully account for human culture and human behaviour, especially regarding the altruistic/moral behaviour that is characteristic of humans alone.
Many of the arguments surrounding cultural evolution are turf wars – and not merely the turf wars between archaeologists and evolutionary biologists that emerge in Maschner’s anthology. In the case of Darwinian explanations for altruistic behaviour, the problem is that these theories disregard the unresolved philosophical problems regarding determinism and free will, inevitably leading to a turf war both with philosophy and almost every form of religion. Such explanations involve a brute relegation of religion to a psychological crutch or social engineering and IMHO this is a failure to provide a full philosophical, anthropological or psychological account of either altruism or religion.
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