Culture and the Course of Human Evolution
Gary Tomlinson
Abstract
The story of the emergence of modern humanity needs to take account of cultural and biological evolution, as well as the interaction of the two; it must describe a biocultural evolution. Culture and the Course of Human Evolution advances a new model for our emergence from earlier hominins, one that incorporates an innovative view of its cultural aspects. It joins an analysis of culture in its broadest and deepest elements, as they are manifested in nonhuman animals today and were present in our distant ancestors, to the latest approaches to biological evolution. It describes how cultural chang ... More
The story of the emergence of modern humanity needs to take account of cultural and biological evolution, as well as the interaction of the two; it must describe a biocultural evolution. Culture and the Course of Human Evolution advances a new model for our emergence from earlier hominins, one that incorporates an innovative view of its cultural aspects. It joins an analysis of culture in its broadest and deepest elements, as they are manifested in nonhuman animals today and were present in our distant ancestors, to the latest approaches to biological evolution. It describes how cultural changes among our ancestors extended the capacities found in many animals to interpret their worlds through signs, and it details how this growing semiotic complexity led to emergent, systematic cultural structures that boosted late hominins beyond the attainments of other animals. These structures in turn entered into the mechanisms of natural selection, forming unprecedented dynamics in them. The model of biocultural evolution described here casts new light on the latest findings of Paleolithic archaeologists, offering a solution to the puzzle that stands at the heart of our deep history: the dramatic growth over the last 250,000 years in the powers of humans to construct their niches, alter their environments, and shift the impact of selective pressures on them.
Keywords:
biocultural evolution,
evolutionary theory,
hominins,
Paleolithic humans,
semiotics,
cultural systems,
emergence,
niche construction
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226548494 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: January 2019 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226548661.001.0001 |
