human biocultural and social evolution essay

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The socio-cultural evolution of our species

Jürgen Klüver

1 University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.E-mail: [email protected]

Many biologists and social scientists have noted that with the development of human culture, the biological evolution of Homo sapiens was usurped by socio-cultural evolution. The construction of artificial environments and social structures created new criteria for selection, and biological fitness was replaced by ‘cultural fitness', which is often different for different cultures and is generally not measured by the number of offspring. Moreover, the mechanism of socio-cultural evolution is different from the model of biological evolution that was proposed by Charles Darwin (1809–1882), and refined by many others. In essence, socio-cultural evolution is ‘Lamarckian' in nature—it is an example of acquired inheritance, as described by the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829)—because humans are able to pass on cultural achievements to the next generation.

Yet, the idea that cultural fitness has replaced biological fitness does not fully take into account the thousands of years of human biological evolution that occurred long before socio-cultural evolution, in its strictest sense, took its course. Modern Homo sapiens first appeared about 200,000 years ago; however, socio-cultural evolution only began about 10,000 years ago, when early hunter–gatherer societies began to change their simple forms of segmentary social differentiation during the so-called Neolithic revolution, which was mainly caused by the invention of agriculture and cattle breeding. In mathematical terms, one could say that human biological evolution created an attractor: a stable state impervious to change. Various mathematical models of biological evolution, namely the genetic algorithm ( Holland, 1975 ), show that the generation of such an attractor is the usual result of evolutionary processes ( Klüver, 2000 ). Nevertheless, socio-cultural evolution did not end biological evolution; in fact, for most of the time that Homo sapiens has existed, socio-cultural evolution has been so slow that it could not have affected biological evolution. Here, I attempt to explain why modern humans existed long before socio-cultural evolution really began.

What does socio-cultural evolution mean? There have been many attempts to define this ambiguous concept ( Trigger, 1998 ), which have interpreted the term ‘evolution' in a literal sense and assumed that socio-cultural evolution is determined by the same mechanisms as its biological counterpart. It is true that the evolution of human societies and cultures shares some similarities with biological evolution, but in many respects these two are not the same. Therefore, at the outset, it is necessary to give a precise definition of evolution in the field of human societies ( Klüver, 2002 ).

Socio-cultural evolution, as the name implies, has two dimensions: social and cultural. Some of the great social theorists of the last century defined ‘culture' in terms of the generally accepted knowledge of a certain society or social group ( Habermas, 1981 ; Giddens, 1984 ). Under this definition, ‘knowledge' is not limited to natural and social phenomena, but includes, for example, religion, worldviews and moral values. Similarly, ‘accepted' does not imply that such knowledge is true according to scientific standards—for example, the Judaeo-Christian belief that God created the world—but only that it is accepted within one culture as ‘true'. The definition of ‘social' naturally refers to social structures. ‘Social' can be defined as the set of rules that govern all social interactions in a certain society. The separation of power into legislative, judicative and executive arms of government in modern democracies is such a rule, as is the rule to drive on the right-hand side of the road in most countries. In mathematical terms, we can then define a society ( S ) using the equation S = ( St , C ), where C refers to culture and St refers to social structure.

In essence, socio-cultural evolution is ‘Lamarckian' in nature […] because humans are able to pass on cultural achievements to the next generation

Culture and social structure are, of course, abstracts that cannot be quantified and must instead be translated into empirical categories—namely, observable actions by, and interactions of, social actors. In a meta-theoretical sense, this transforms the concepts of culture and social structure into an action theory because only individual actors can be the units of an empirical social science. The main concepts here are social roles and their occupants.

Consider, for example, the social role of a medical doctor. A doctor is characterized by his or her knowledge of disease diagnosis, how to choose appropriate therapies and how to tell the patient to follow the therapy. However, the role of the doctor is also defined by specific rules—the Hippocratic Oath, for example—and by specific laws about how to treat patients, or how to adhere to health insurance or national regulations. Similarly, the role of a university professor is defined by specific scientific knowledge and specific rules of interaction with respect to, for example, teaching, publishing and dealing with university administration. We can therefore define a social role ( r ) as r = ( k , ru ), where k is the role-specific knowledge and ru represents the role-specific rules of social interaction ( Berger & Luckmann, 1966 ).

An individual in a society is a social actor when he or she occupies a specific social role, which is not necessarily a professional role. There are other social roles such as being a parent or being a member of a political party, and it is relatively easy to define the social rules and role-specific knowledge of these positions. Therefore, we can define a society as a web of social roles, the occupants of which interact according to the rules and to the knowledge that define these roles. A society is then produced and reproduced through the role-specific interactions of the role occupants. In many cases, the social structure and culture of a society merely reproduce—that is, they do not change notably. Yet, sometimes roles and interactions change markedly, and the social structure and culture change accordingly. Such times are called periods of reform or—in the extreme—revolutions.

…for most of the time that Homo sapiens has existed, socio-cultural evolution has been so slow that it could not have affected biological evolution

Now that we have defined what we mean by a society—based on culture and social structure—we can define socio-cultural evolution as the creation and change of social roles through new knowledge that changes and creates social rules. Socio-cultural evolution, then, alters and enlarges a society in the two dimensions of social structure and culture. The driving force is new ideas in the cultural dimension and the ensuing changes to the social structure that create new social rules of interaction. Social roles in a societal system therefore “become the equivalent of genes in a genetic system” ( Read, 2005 ); however, this is only a formal equivalence, as the evolutionary mechanisms in these cases operate differently.

When we speak of social roles, we must make an important distinction. On the one hand, some social roles—those of artisans, craftspeople, artists, technicians, scientists or entrepreneurs, for example—are defined by ‘creative tasks', which expand the culture of society. Cultural evolution is therefore only possible if the occupants of creative roles enjoy a certain degree of freedom. On the other hand, there are roles—those of priests, politicians or teachers, for example—that serve to maintain social traditions, culture and social structures. We can call these ‘maintenance roles' in contrast to the ‘creative roles'. These are essential for the integration of a society because traditional norms and values allow a society to maintain its societal identity.

The crucial factor for the evolutionary potential of a society, then, is the relationship between creative roles and maintenance roles. If the maintenance roles have a strong influence on the creative roles, the occupants of creative roles cannot fulfil their creativity and the development of culture stagnates; a society gets caught in a cultural evolutionary attractor. The relationship between these two classes of roles is the decisive parameter for the evolutionary power of a society, which can be called an evolutionary parameter (EP) and determines the evolutionary fate of a society. The ultimately unsuccessful attempts of the Catholic Church to silence proponents of the heliocentric model of the planetary system—most notably Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)—is an example of an unfavourable EP. A society must have a certain degree of heterogeneity with respect to the existence of different roles and the social ‘distance' between the two kinds of roles. If a society is too homogeneous, socio-cultural evolution will stop sooner or later.

Looking at historical examples can validate this general hypothesis about the logic of socio-cultural evolution. Starting in the fourteenth century, the European nations entered a period characterized by reforms, revolutions and scientific progress—known respectively as the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment—and eventually evolved into modern Western societies. The technological and social competitors of Europe during the Middle Ages—notably feudal China and the Islamic societies—did not change in the same way because they did not have the EP values of European societies, despite the fact that they were culturally and scientifically more advanced than feudal Europe. The main reason for this was that the occupants of creative roles in Europe enjoyed a larger degree of freedom than those in rival societies ( Klüver, 2002 ; Needham, 1970 ). In particular, the large trading cities of the Hanse, the Flemish cities and the cities of Northern Italy were centres of cultural growth with a certain political autonomy. This environment gave the occupants of creative social roles the benefit of greater freedom from the feudal political powers and the Catholic Church. This political and social structure had no parallels in the other great cultures.

On the basis of this hypothesis, our research group constructed mathematical models of socio-cultural evolution, the so-called socio-cultural algorithm (SCA) and the expanded socio-cultural cognitive algorithm (SCCA). These are multi-agent systems that consist of artificial actors. Each actor is represented by a combination of different neural nets, and the social relations between the actors are modelled by a cellular automaton and a Boolean net ( Klüver, 2002 ; Klüver et al, 2003 ). Each actor is able to occupy a certain social role, can learn from others and can generate new ideas—of course, in an idealized and simplified manner. The sum of all the ideas that these actors generate is the level of the respective culture. According to the general evolutionary hypothesis, the actors, if they occupy a creative role, develop new ideas in proportion to the influence of the occupants of maintenance roles. We ran the models with different EP values and different numbers of actors ranging from 100 to more than 1,000,000. One important result was that the number of actors had no significant impact on the results—the evolutionary logic operated in small or large artificial societies.

Social roles in a societal system therefore “become the equivalent of genes in a genetic system”…

One typical result that we observed was a so-called Toynbee development, named after the British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975) who showed that this is the fate of all known cultures ( Toynbee, 1934–39 ; Fig 1 ). This artificial culture grows quickly but eventually slows down and stagnates. Most EP values led to this development in our simulations, which shows, at least in part, the significance of EP values and provides an explanation for the historical processes.

A Toynbee development.

Only a few evolutionarily favourable EP values were able to generate a different image ( Fig 2 ). In these cases, the artificial culture did not stop, but was able to continue to advance its cultural growth for as long as it existed. This might be the fate of Western culture, as its growth, particularly in science and technology, shows no detectable limits at present. Again, the reason for this is the decisive role of the EP and the relatively large degree of freedom that the occupants of creative roles enjoy in the West. In addition, we assume that the EP values themselves changed during European cultural development because the current values are even more favourable than those during the Medieval Ages. In other words, the EP values start a process of socio-cultural evolution and are themselves changed by this process—an evolution of evolution.

A Western development.

The general hypothesis about socio-cultural evolution, the historical data and our simulations can apparently explain human history as an evolutionary process. In particular, they can explain the special path of European and, subsequently, Western culture. They might also answer the question raised at the beginning of this article: why did it take such a long time before socio-cultural evolution started at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution?

Early hunter–gatherer societies, or segmentary differentiated tribal societies as they are called in sociology, are homogeneous. There is little differentiation of social roles, which are mostly based on gender and age. The creative potential of these early humans could not unfold; small degrees of labour division did not allow for special roles and a common worldview of animistic religions further hindered individual thinking. It took a long time for these societies to become sufficiently heterogeneous to generate the creative achievements of the Neolithic revolution, which, in turn, changed the social structure of societies. The segmentary differentiated societies became stratified into social hierarchies and allowed a significant division of labour. Yet it took a long time to achieve this stage of socio-cultural evolution—and many tribal societies did not reach it at all—because only small processes of differentiation took place and creative individuals could only slowly create new ideas in their respective society. The long period of time between the biological emergence of Homo sapiens and the Neolithic revolution was necessary to allow these slow processes to generate a sufficiently heterogeneous society that could move to the next step in the evolutionary process. In other words, the Neolithic revolution could only take place when some societies were sufficiently differentiated to allow for individual creative processes. Moreover, it can be assumed that the initial EP values of the tribal societies did not significantly change with the slow growth of human culture.

The decisive question is, of course, whether this model of socio-cultural evolution can help us to make some educated guesses about the possible future of mankind. Will the process of globalization lead to a world culture that is characterized by the Western way? In theoretical sociology, we call this the hypothesis of universal modernization, which implies that only Western societies are truly modern ones and that the process of modernization will change all societies until they become modern in the Western sense, albeit with local variants. This classical hypothesis dates back to the Enlightenment, and was formulated in its most influential form by the social theorists Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Max Weber (1864–1920). Of course, the universal modernization hypothesis was, and still is, much discussed and criticized, in particular for being Eurocentric. One of the most famous critiques was made by the American political scientist Samuel Huntington in his bestseller The Clash of Civilizations ( Huntington, 1996 ). Although I cannot discuss this and other criticisms of the modernization hypothesis for reasons of space, I can provide empirical data to validate the hypothesis, and make a methodical proposal based on the model of socio-cultural evolution and the SCCA program.

…the social future of mankind is probably a global society based on the traditions of Western societies with local adaptations

The European, and eventually Western, process of modernization is characterized by certain economic, political, educational and gender-based criteria that are indicators of modern development. If we apply these criteria to the developmental processes in different countries, we can detect astonishing parallels to Western history ( Oesterdiekhoff, 2003 ). The economical relevance of the agrarian sector is decreasing in developing countries, even in Africa, whereas industry is gaining in importance. The same trend is valid for urbanization processes: in all developing countries, the rural population is decreasing as large cities emerge, just as happened in Europe in the eighteenth century. In most places, birth rates are also steadily declining—a trend that has been observed in Western countries since the nineteenth century. The mean marriage age of women is rising, which is certainly one cause of the decline in the birth rate and an important indicator of an increasing degree of female autonomy. The average number of democratic or semi-democratic societies is increasing—in which ‘democratic' means adopting the Western model of a parliamentary democracy. The levels of literacy and the number of participants in higher education are increasing in most countries, and many rapidly developing countries are investing massively in science and technology—not only large nations such as China and India, but also various South American countries. All of the trends that are now visible in developing countries were seen previously in Europe and North America as they progressed towards modern Western culture.

Although there are certainly other factors at work, this selection shows that many countries that are on their way to modernization follow the path of Western societies. Even politically regressive processes, for example the rise of Islamic theocracies, are expected—indeed, European countries experienced regressive fascist movements or periods of stagnation. Modernization as a form of socio-cultural evolution is not a linear process. As a preliminary summary, it seems that Marx, Weber and the other adherents of the universal modernization theory are right. At least, the data are more compatible with the universalistic theory of modernization than with its rivals.

Furthermore, our SCCA model provides support for this theory. The theoretical foundation of the model is the assumption that socio-cultural evolution depends on an increasing degree of role autonomy in important social domains. In particular, this assumption can explain the fact that the process of modernization emerged in Europe before it became the core of Western culture. If these theoretical and mathematical assumptions are correct, the validity of the universalistic theory of modernization—the question of the final socio-cultural character that will result from globalization processes—can be analysed in a twofold manner.

Empirical data from developing countries indicate that there is a growing trend in favour of role autonomy—again referring to gender roles and the rise of higher education. Overall, women are becoming more autonomous, and education is emancipating itself from religious and political influences in developing countries. Again, women's rights and the introduction of universal education marked important points in the history and development of Western countries. Such data can then be inserted into simulations, such as our SCA or SCCA, to predict roughly the probable development of these countries. Clearly, even such micro-sociologically based simulation programs can only give predictions about probable developments, but this is still better than a ‘best guess' or wishful thinking.

In any case, the future of our species depends on more factors than can be covered in this article. Yet, the social future of mankind is probably a global society based on the traditions of Western societies with local adaptations. Neither China nor India will become a mirror of the USA, but similarly neither Germany nor France is such a mirror. In the end, I believe, Marx and Weber will be proved right.

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Niche Construction Theory and Human Biocultural Evolution

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Biologists and anthropologists have extensively documented how many animals—human and non-human—modify their immediate surroundings, some subtly, others extensively. This trend is carried to its extreme in Homo sapiens to the point where many of us today live in the almost entirely constructed niches of the built urban environment. Proponents of niche construction theory (NCT) argue that classical evolutionary theory does not account satisfactorily for organisms’ active niche modification that impacts selective parameters for themselves and/or also other organisms. Complementing evolutionary theory focused on genetic change alone as well as gene-culture co-evolutionary models, NCT aims at integrating ecology, anthropology and evolution by a greater awareness to ecological inheritances. The key to the niche construction approach therefore is the inclusion of organism-induced environmental modification bequeathed from the modifying generation to its offspring. Critically then, it is either selection that leads to changes over time in a given population, or individuals induce changes in their environment in order to offset or channel further selection. While there is intense debate about the merits of NCT within the biosciences, archaeology is in a situation to make an important contribution here: it allows for a greater role of organismal agency in the evolutionary process, and many objects as well as features in the archaeological record speak directly about lasting modifications of the environment. In this chapter, I aim to provide a richly but by no means exhaustively referenced review of the early emergence and development of NCT as well as the controversies surrounding it. I illustrate the specific application of NCT in anthropology and archaeology by focusing on selected behaviours of premodern and modern humans and their co-evolutionary impacts such as the use of fire, changing human-animal and human-plant relations and landscape modifications. I also highlight more subtle forms of niche construction that may have left traces in the cognitive make-up of past and indeed present populations and link NCT with the notion of the Anthropocene. NCT remains a contested body of theory. In concluding, I point to potential archaeological research avenues that can make significant contributions to this emerging field.

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Riede, F. (2019). Niche Construction Theory and Human Biocultural Evolution. In: Prentiss, A. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11117-5_17

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Human Nature and Biocultural Evolution

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First published in 1984, Human Nature and Biocultural Evolution aims to delineate a theory of human nature, viewed as an interrelated set of genetically programmed behavioral predispositions, and a theory of biocultural evolution. The author’s approach is based on the hypothesis that innate predispositions and cultural-environmental factors cooperate to determine human behavior and socio-cultural forms.

Professor Lopreato begins by tracing the development of evolutionary biology up to sociobiology. It is his argument that the social and biological disciplines have, for over a century, been moving towards a synthesis, and that Homo sapiens is neither just another animal, nor so unique a being that culture has become divorced from its genetic underpinnings. The argument is supported with evidence from evolutionary biology and social science, with a critical discussion of basic issues of behavioral science and with an analysis of certain famous theories in social science (e.g. theories of suicide, anomie, capitalism), which prove to be richer and more complete when viewed from a biocultural perspective.

The theory of human nature is arrived at through a rich analysis of ethnographic, psychological, and sociological arguments and data, as well as facts and theories from comparative zoology. In the process, the author treats critically numerous theoretical problems associated with topics such as exploitation, class consciousness, structured inequality, reciprocal behavior, territorial aggression, religious ritual, socialization, ethnicity, and prejudice. The author concludes with an examination of behavioral predispositions that are hypothesized to be at the base of cultural variation.

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1. Introduction  2. Behavioral Predispositions, Cultural Universals, and Cultural Variants  3. The Interplay of Biology and Culture  4. Predispositions of Self-Enhancement  5. Predispositions of Sociality, I  6. Sociality, II: Ascetic Altruism  7. A Model of Sociocultural Variation and Selective Retention  8. Behavioral Predispositions and Religious Behavior  9. Evolutionary Foundations of Family and Ethnicity   

Joseph Lopreato was former chairperson of the Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, USA. He published widely in areas such as sociological theory, political sociology, social development, and ethnic studies.

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Introductory essay

Written by the educator who created What Makes Us Human?, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in his field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

As a biological anthropologist, I never liked drawing sharp distinctions between human and non-human. Such boundaries make little evolutionary sense, as they ignore or grossly underestimate what we humans have in common with our ancestors and other primates. What's more, it's impossible to make sharp distinctions between human and non-human in the paleoanthropological record. Even with a time machine, we couldn't go back to identify one generation of humans and say that the previous generation contained none: one's biological parents, by definition, must be in the same species as their offspring. This notion of continuity is inherent to most evolutionary perspectives and it's reflected in the similarities (homologies) shared among very different species. As a result, I've always been more interested in what makes us similar to, not different from, non-humans.

Evolutionary research has clearly revealed that we share great biological continuity with others in the animal kingdom. Yet humans are truly unique in ways that have not only shaped our own evolution, but have altered the entire planet. Despite great continuity and similarity with our fellow primates, our biocultural evolution has produced significant, profound discontinuities in how we interact with each other and in our environment, where no precedent exists in other animals. Although we share similar underlying evolved traits with other species, we also display uses of those traits that are so novel and extraordinary that they often make us forget about our commonalities. Preparing a twig to fish for termites may seem comparable to preparing a stone to produce a sharp flake—but landing on the moon and being able to return to tell the story is truly out of this non-human world.

Humans are the sole hominin species in existence today. Thus, it's easier than it would have been in the ancient past to distinguish ourselves from our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom. Primatologists such as Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal, however, continue to clarify why the lines dividing human from non-human aren't as distinct as we might think. Goodall's classic observations of chimpanzee behaviors like tool use, warfare and even cannibalism demolished once-cherished views of what separates us from other primates. de Waal has done exceptional work illustrating some continuity in reciprocity and fairness, and in empathy and compassion, with other species. With evolution, it seems, we are always standing on the shoulders of others, our common ancestors.

Primatology—the study of living primates—is only one of several approaches that biological anthropologists use to understand what makes us human. Two others, paleoanthropology (which studies human origins through the fossil record) and molecular anthropology (which studies human origins through genetic analysis), also yield some surprising insights about our hominin relatives. For example, Zeresenay Alemsegad's painstaking field work and analysis of Selam, a 3.3 million-year old fossil of a 3-year-old australopithecine infant from Ethiopia, exemplifies how paleoanthropologists can blur boundaries between living humans and apes.

Selam, if alive today, would not be confused with a three-year-old human—but neither would we mistake her for a living ape. Selam's chimpanzee-like hyoid bone suggests a more ape-like form of vocal communication, rather than human language capability. Overall, she would look chimp-like in many respects—until she walked past you on two feet. In addition, based on Selam's brain development, Alemseged theorizes that Selam and her contemporaries experienced a human-like extended childhood with a complex social organization.

Fast-forward to the time when Neanderthals lived, about 130,000 – 30,000 years ago, and most paleoanthropologists would agree that language capacity among the Neanderthals was far more human-like than ape-like; in the Neanderthal fossil record, hyoids and other possible evidence of language can be found. Moreover, paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo's groundbreaking research in molecular anthropology strongly suggests that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans. Paabo's work informs our genetic understanding of relationships to ancient hominins in ways that one could hardly imagine not long ago—by extracting and comparing DNA from fossils comprised largely of rock in the shape of bones and teeth—and emphasizes the great biological continuity we see, not only within our own species, but with other hominins sometimes classified as different species.

Though genetics has made truly astounding and vital contributions toward biological anthropology by this work, it's important to acknowledge the equally pivotal role paleoanthropology continues to play in its tandem effort to flesh out humanity's roots. Paleoanthropologists like Alemsegad draw on every available source of information to both physically reconstruct hominin bodies and, perhaps more importantly, develop our understanding of how they may have lived, communicated, sustained themselves, and interacted with their environment and with each other. The work of Pääbo and others in his field offers powerful affirmations of paleoanthropological studies that have long investigated the contributions of Neanderthals and other hominins to the lineage of modern humans. Importantly, without paleoanthropology, the continued discovery and recovery of fossil specimens to later undergo genetic analysis would be greatly diminished.

Molecular anthropology and paleoanthropology, though often at odds with each other in the past regarding modern human evolution, now seem to be working together to chip away at theories that portray Neanderthals as inferior offshoots of humanity. Molecular anthropologists and paleoanthropologists also concur that that human evolution did not occur in ladder-like form, with one species leading to the next. Instead, the fossil evidence clearly reveals an evolutionary bush, with numerous hominin species existing at the same time and interacting through migration, some leading to modern humans and others going extinct.

Molecular anthropologist Spencer Wells uses DNA analysis to understand how our biological diversity correlates with ancient migration patterns from Africa into other continents. The study of our genetic evolution reveals that as humans migrated from Africa to all continents of the globe, they developed biological and cultural adaptations that allowed for survival in a variety of new environments. One example is skin color. Biological anthropologist Nina Jablonski uses satellite data to investigate the evolution of skin color, an aspect of human biological variation carrying tremendous social consequences. Jablonski underscores the importance of trying to understand skin color as a single trait affected by natural selection with its own evolutionary history and pressures, not as a tool to grouping humans into artificial races.

For Pääbo, Wells, Jablonski and others, technology affords the chance to investigate our origins in exciting new ways, adding pieces into the human puzzle at a record pace. At the same time, our technologies may well be changing who we are as a species and propelling us into an era of "neo-evolution."

Increasingly over time, human adaptations have been less related to predators, resources, or natural disasters, and more related to environmental and social pressures produced by other humans. Indeed, biological anthropologists have no choice but to consider the cultural components related to human evolutionary changes over time. Hominins have been constructing their own niches for a very long time, and when we make significant changes (such as agricultural subsistence), we must adapt to those changes. Classic examples of this include increases in sickle-cell anemia in new malarial environments, and greater lactose tolerance in regions with a long history of dairy farming.

Today we can, in some ways, evolve ourselves. We can enact biological change through genetic engineering, which operates at an astonishing pace in comparison to natural selection. Medical ethicist Harvey Fineberg calls this "neo-evolution". Fineberg goes beyond asking who we are as a species, to ask who we want to become and what genes we want our offspring to inherit. Depending on one's point of view, the future he envisions is both tantalizing and frightening: to some, it shows the promise of science to eradicate genetic abnormalities, while for others it raises the specter of eugenics. It's also worth remembering that while we may have the potential to influence certain genetic predispositions, changes in genotypes do not guarantee the desired results. Environmental and social pressures like pollution, nutrition or discrimination can trigger "epigenetic" changes which can turn genes on or off, or make them less or more active. This is important to factor in as we consider possible medical benefits from efforts in self-directed evolution. We must also ask: In an era of human-engineered, rapid-rate neo-evolution, who decides what the new human blueprints should be?

Technology figures in our evolutionary future in other ways as well. According to anthropologist Amber Case, many of our modern technologies are changing us into cyborgs: our smart phones, tablets and other tools are "exogenous components" that afford us astonishing and unsettling capabilities. They allow us to travel instantly through time and space and to create second, "digital selves" that represent our "analog selves" and interact with others in virtual environments. This has psychological implications for our analog selves that worry Case: a loss of mental reflection, the "ambient intimacy" of knowing that we can connect to anyone we want to at any time, and the "panic architecture" of managing endless information across multiple devices in virtual and real-world environments.

Despite her concerns, Case believes that our technological future is essentially positive. She suggests that at a fundamental level, much of this technology is focused on the basic concerns all humans share: who am I, where and how do I fit in, what do others think of me, who can I trust, who should I fear? Indeed, I would argue that we've evolved to be obsessed with what other humans are thinking—to be mind-readers in a sense—in a way that most would agree is uniquely human. For even though a baboon can assess those baboons it fears and those it can dominate, it cannot say something to a second baboon about a third baboon in order to trick that baboon into telling a fourth baboon to gang up on a fifth baboon. I think Facebook is a brilliant example of tapping into our evolved human psychology. We can have friends we've never met and let them know who we think we are—while we hope they like us and we try to assess what they're actually thinking and if they can be trusted. It's as if technology has provided an online supply of an addictive drug for a social mind evolved to crave that specific stimulant!

Yet our heightened concern for fairness in reciprocal relationships, in combination with our elevated sense of empathy and compassion, have led to something far greater than online chats: humanism itself. As Jane Goodall notes, chimps and baboons cannot rally together to save themselves from extinction; instead, they must rely on what she references as the "indomitable human spirit" to lessen harm done to the planet and all the living things that share it. As Goodall and other TED speakers in this course ask: will we use our highly evolved capabilities to secure a better future for ourselves and other species?

I hope those reading this essay, watching the TED Talks, and further exploring evolutionary perspectives on what makes us human, will view the continuities and discontinuities of our species as cause for celebration and less discrimination. Our social dependency and our prosocial need to identify ourselves, our friends, and our foes make us human. As a species, we clearly have major relationship problems, ranging from personal to global scales. Yet whenever we expand our levels of compassion and understanding, whenever we increase our feelings of empathy across cultural and even species boundaries, we benefit individually and as a species.

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Zeresenay Alemseged

The search for humanity's roots, relevant talks.

We are all cyborgs now

Frans de Waal

Moral behavior in animals.

Harvey Fineberg

Are we ready for neo-evolution.

Jane Goodall

What separates us from chimpanzees.

Nina Jablonski

Skin color is an illusion.

Spencer Wells

A family tree for humanity.

Svante Pääbo

Dna clues to our inner neanderthal.