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Cultural evolution, the development of cultures from simpler to more complex forms. The subject was once viewed as a unilinear phenomenon that describes the evolution of human social behavior. It is now understood as a multilinear phenomenon that describes the evolution of individual cultures or societies.
The basic idea that culture evolves has its roots in the work of Charles Darwin and other 19th century scholars. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin drew on the work of historical linguists such as August Schleicher to argue that languages gradually evolve over time in a manner similar to how he had earlier argued organisms evolve in The Origin of Species (1859).
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 ...
2 days ago · Anthropology is the study of the origin and development of human societies and cultures. Culture is the learned behavior of people, including their languages, belief systems, social structures, institutions, and material goods. Anthropologists study the characteristics of past and present human communities through a variety of techniques. In ...
As academic fields became specialized over the course of the 1800s CE, history identified itself as the study of the past based on written artifacts. A sister field, archeology, developed as the study of the past based on non-written artifacts (such as the remains of bodies in grave sites, surviving buildings, and tools).
- Christopher Brooks
- 2020
Aug 9, 2007 · To trace the exact effects of language and intelligence on the development of human culture will require a multi-disciplinary effort examining ancient human cultures, animals in the wild, human ...
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May 17, 2021 · It contrasts with a standard gene–culture coevolution story by giving a central role to culture–culture coevolution, with a fairly circumscribed role for genetic change. This type of account is favoured by evidence that cultural learning is culturally inherited today (electronic supplementary material, S3) and can be tested further through empirical research on the behaviour of human and ...
