{"id":2985,"date":"2019-11-08T16:28:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T20:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=2985"},"modified":"2022-03-09T16:57:58","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T20:57:58","slug":"cultural-evolution-of-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/cultural-evolution-of-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Evolution of Man: How Our Global Civilization Began"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What are the major events in the cultural evolution<\/a> of man? How did these events shape our cultures today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cultural evolution of man has been shaped by changes in the ways we think, our language, and the ways by which we relate to each other. Language, especially, has had a powerful role in creating the global culture we recognize today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll cover the events of man’s cultural evolution and how language brought people together to create a global society<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Cultural Evolution of Man<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Cognitive Revolution<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The first major event in the cultural evolution of man was the Cognitive Revolution<\/a>. 2.5 million years ago, Homo sapiens <\/em>was just one of eight human species. The first major revolution for Sapiens was the Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago. Before that point, Sapiens weren\u2019t particularly special and weren\u2019t superior to the other seven human species. The Cognitive Revolution involved the development of three new abilities, all related to language, that helped Homo sapiens outpace their fellow humans. 
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Ability #1: Flexible Language<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

One reason the language of Sapiens was different was that it was more complex.<\/strong> Rather than communicating simple ideas the way green monkeys do (\u201cCareful! A lion!\u201d or \u201cCareful! An eagle!\u201d), the language of Sapiens could warn someone about a lion, describe its location, and plan how to deal with it. This allowed them to plan and follow through on complex actions like avoiding predators and working together to trap prey.
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Ability #2: Gossip<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A second distinction of the Sapiens language was its ability to convey gossip. We think of gossip as a bad thing, but using language to convey information about other people is a way to build trust. <\/strong>Trust is critical for social cooperation, and cooperation gives you an advantage in the struggle to survive<\/a> and pass on your genes. Sapiens could form groups of up to 150 people. They didn\u2019t need to know every group member personally to trust them. In a battle, a small group of Neanderthals<\/a> was no match for a group of 150 Sapiens.
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Ability #3: Fictions<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A third benefit of the Sapiens\u2019 language was how it was used to create fictions, also known as \u201csocial constructs\u201d or \u201cimagined realities.\u201d
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Being able to communicate information about things that don\u2019t exist doesn\u2019t seem like an advantage. But Sapiens seem to be the only animals who have this ability to discuss things that don\u2019t have a physical presence in the world, like money, human rights, corporations, and God.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In and of itself, imagining things that don\u2019t exist isn\u2019t an asset\u2014you won\u2019t aid your chances of survival if you go into the forest looking for ghosts rather than berries and deer.
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What\u2019s important about the ability to create fictions is the ability to create collective <\/em>fictions, fictions everyone believes. <\/strong>
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Although imagined, these myths are crucial. Without collective fictions, the systems built on them collapse.<\/strong> Most of our modern systems are built on these imagined realities. These myths are powerful, and the fact that they\u2019re not rooted in objective reality doesn\u2019t undermine them. This was a major turning point in the cultural evolution of man.
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Collective fictions allowed early Sapiens to cooperate within extremely large groups of people, most of whom they\u2019d never met, and it rapidly changed their social behavior.
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The Fiction of the Political Order<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The next major stage in man’s cultural evolution came with the invention of the political order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People evolved to cooperate in small groups. As their way of life changed rapidly, there was no time for Sapiens to evolve the skills of mass cooperation. As groups of people got bigger, they needed some kind of organizing structure, a way to help people work together to divide land, settle disputes, and keep the peace.<\/strong> Organizing so many people involved creating myths that served as the links between previously distinct bands of people. This was the foundation of cooperation.
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Cooperation didn\u2019t necessarily mean egalitarian collaboration. Cooperation was often built on oppression. Those in power exploited the farmers to maintain the system.
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Fictions can foster cooperation among nations and empires. We\u2019ll look at the Code of Hammurabi and the Declaration of Independence<\/a> together to demonstrate how these seemingly dissimilar documents actually function very similarly.
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Two Examples of How Myths Can Sustain Empires<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Fictions can be useful. We like to think that political orders are founded on truths, but in reality, political orders are unable to function without relying on fictions. We’ll see over and over how important fictions were (and are) to the cultural evolution of man.
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The Code of Hammurabi<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In 1776 BC, the Babylonian Empire was the biggest in the world, with over a million subjects. King Hammurabi established a code that presented his power and legal system as mandated by the gods. The code emphasized hierarchy, breaking the population into \u201csuperior people,\u201d commoners, and slaves. Your worth was established based on your class and gender.
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The idea was that if everyone accepted this code, the empire\u2019s million subjects could cooperate with each other. And it worked. People believed the myth that the gods dictated these laws, rights, and differing human worths, and the Code of Hammurabi is still known today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The American Declaration of Independence<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to think of the Code of Hammurabi as a myth. It may not be as easy to think of our own country\u2019s foundational document as a myth. But seeing it for the fiction it is can help us better understand man’s cultural evolution.
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Similar to Hammurabi\u2019s assertion that his code came from the gods, Thomas Jefferson justifies the rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence by writing that they are \u201cendowed by [men\u2019s] Creator.\u201d Both have a divine source. Also like the Code of Hammurabi, the Declaration of Independence was written as a way to unify disparate groups of people.
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Unlike the Code, the Declaration is based not on hierarchy but on equality. Who\u2019s right? Neither. The concepts of rights and equality are just as much myths as the concepts of hierarchy and of value based on class and gender. They exist only in the mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order for the phrase \u201call Men are created equal\u201d to be true, we\u2019d have to find that sentiment in the physical world. But there\u2019s no sense in which we are equal in objective reality. People have different genes, are influenced by different environments, develop different personalities, and have different chances of success and survival. The evolution of our species depends on our differences, our genetic mutations.
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There\u2019s also no objective existence of \u201crights.\u201d For example, birds don\u2019t fly because they have the right to fly. They fly because they have wings. Likewise, \u201cliberty\u201d is a concept humans invented. You can\u2019t measure it and it doesn\u2019t exist outside our minds.
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None of this means that the Declaration of Independence is a lie or worthless. It has helped create a stable, cooperative society. In fact, collective myths are the only <\/em>way to organize large groups effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Invention of Writing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The next major turning point in the cultural evolution of man was the invention of writing<\/a>. Although today we connect the word \u201cwriting\u201d with \u201cliterature,\u201d early writing was used to record tax payments, debts, and property ownership, not to write poems and stories. Writing also wasn\u2019t invented to record spoken language. It was invented to fill a gap, to succeed where spoken language failed. It was needed to record data.
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The Sumerians invented writing in southern Mesopotamia between 3500 BC and 3000 BC. Eventually, the Sumerians wanted to record more than just mathematical data, so they gradually added signs to their script, which developed into a script capable of representing spoken language. We call it cuneiform.
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People who weren\u2019t accountants started writing. Kings used cuneiform to give orders, priests used it to write down oracles, and citizens wrote letters. Also around 2500 BC, the Egyptians developed hieroglyphics. Soon after, societies in China and Central America developed full scripts.
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It was only after the spread of full scripts that people started writing histories, dramas, prophecies, and poetry. Works that existed only through the passing down of oral tradition, such as the Hebrew Bible, the Iliad<\/em>, and the Buddhist Tripitaka, began to be written down.
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As we\u2019ve seen, Sapiens evolve genetically to organize themselves into large groups, so they formed societies through the use of imagined orders<\/a> and writing.
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The Cultural Evolution of Man: Imagined Hierarchies<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We require these imagined orders to function, but they\u2019re not equitable or impartial. They result in systems that discriminate some and privilege others. In fact, there\u2019s no known society that doesn\u2019t discriminate.<\/strong> Unfortunately, discrimination seems to be an intrinsic part of the cultural evolution of man.
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Hierarchies have a purpose<\/a>: they let us know how to interact with others<\/a> without actually knowing them<\/strong>, which in theory is more efficient and lets us function in large societies. For instance, a woman selling flowers doesn\u2019t know all her customers personally. To figure out how to divvy up her energy and time, she uses the social cues dictated by each person\u2019s place in the hierarchy\u2014such as the way he\u2019s dressed, his age, and, often, his skin color\u2014to determine who is the executive, likely to buy a lot of expensive roses, and who is the messenger boy, only able to afford daisies.
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Almost all hierarchies are imagined<\/strong> (we\u2019ll look at a possible exception, the hierarchy of males and females, at the end of this chapter). But we usually claim that they\u2019re natural. For example, capitalists believe that the rich are wealthy because they have better business sense, make better choices, and are smarter and harder working. They earn their wealth and the high-quality health care, education, and nutrition that come with it. But (according to Harari) it\u2019s proven that most rich people are wealthy because their parents were wealthy, and that most poor people are poor because their parents were poor. Wealth is rarely purely \u201cearned.\u201d
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Just because our hierarchies are imagined doesn\u2019t mean there isn\u2019t diversity in our biological aptitudes and abilities. Some people are <\/em>smarter or more skilled than others. But we don\u2019t succeed or fail based on these aptitudes alone.<\/strong> Society still largely determines who wins and who loses by dictating whose abilities are nurtured and who get what opportunities.
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How Hierarchies Are Formed<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Imagined societies are generally propped up by three elements: a historical accident, the fear of pollution, and the vicious cycle of discrimination.
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Historical Accident: <\/strong>The roots of prejudicial hierarchies often lie in a random occurrence in history rather than biological differences. 
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Fear of Pollution: <\/strong>Humans are biologically programmed to feel repulsed by people and animals that might carry disease. This is a survival instinct<\/a>. But although the fear is biologically-based, its historical manipulation and exploitation is based in fiction. If you want to ostracize a group (such as Jews, gays, blacks, or women), tell your society that they\u2019re polluted and could contaminate you if you interact with them.
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Vicious Cycle of Discrimination: <\/strong>Once a random historical event that benefits one group and discriminates against another occurs, that hierarchy is perpetuated by the people who benefit from it. This reinforces the prejudices used to justify the system. These prejudices, in turn, help maintain the system, and the cycle continues.
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The Invention of Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the cultural evolution of man brings us to what we recognize today as “culture.” Culture is the \u201cnetwork of artificial instincts\u201d that connect us, myths so ingrained that we take them for granted. As we\u2019ve seen, these myths allow us to cooperate and thrive in large groups.
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Cultures aren\u2019t static. They may have values and norms based on tradition, but they\u2019re still in constant flux. Chapter 9 looks at how cultures evolve, whether that evolution is linear, and where our cultures are headed.
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The Value of Cognitive Dissonance<\/strong> in Man’s Cultural Evolution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Cultural changes may be a result of pressures from external factors like the environment or neighboring cultures. Or they may be the product of internal factors like the contradictions inherent in every culture. Psychologists call these contradictions cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when we hold two or more thoughts or beliefs that are incompatible with one another.<\/strong>
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Every single culture contains contradictions that lead to cognitive dissonance, and they\u2019re actually beneficial. This is because cultures continually attempt to resolve and reconcile the contradictions in their myths. This leads to change, allowing for a more creative and dynamic species. Contradictions in our beliefs force us to examine them and reassess, and this moves culture forward.
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For example, in the West, we prize both equality and individual freedom, but we can\u2019t have them both.
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