{"id":3036,"date":"2019-11-14T19:12:39","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T23:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=3036"},"modified":"2022-03-10T09:15:29","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T13:15:29","slug":"examples-of-cultural-evolution-in-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/examples-of-cultural-evolution-in-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Examples of Cultural Evolution in Humans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What are some examples of cultural evolution<\/a> in humans? How do these examples shed light on our values and assumptions today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll cover five examples of cultural evolution in humans and look at how our cultural assumptions are formed rather than innate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Examples of Imagined Realities<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One benefit of the human 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>
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For instance, you can\u2019t convince a monkey to give you its banana on the argument that if it does, it will get unlimited bananas when it dies and goes to heaven. Your negotiations with monkeys are limited because you can only promise rewards that exist materially in this world. Monkeys can\u2019t create imagined realities like heaven.
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Collective Fictions<\/h5>\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 <\/strong>collective <\/em><\/strong>fictions, fictions everyone believes. <\/strong>These collective myths allow people who\u2019ve never met and otherwise would have nothing in common to cooperate under shared assumptions and goals.
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Collective fictions aren\u2019t the same as lies. These aren\u2019t lies because everyone collectively believes them.<\/strong> For example, members of the UN weren\u2019t lying when they insisted that Libya\u2019s government respect the rights of its citizens, even though Libya, human rights, and the UN itself are all imaginary realities, or social constructs. The borders that separate Libya from other countries are man-made, not physical features of the landscape; human rights is a concept many of us believe in, but rights don\u2019t exist outside our collective imagination; and, like Libya, the UN is a social construct<\/a>, an organization that has no physical existence.
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While humans lived without these social constructs for millennia, today, imaginary realities in some cases matter more than objective realities.<\/strong> For instance, the survival of actual entities like rain forests and endangered river dolphins depends on the charity of imaginary entities like the United States and non-profit organizations.
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Let\u2019s look at an example of cultural evolution in humans that shows how we unquestioningly accept imagined realities and treat them as real entities.
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Example of Cultural Evolution in Humans: Peugeot and the Power of Entities that Don\u2019t Exist<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Does the carmaker Peugeot<\/a> exist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must. The corporation employs 200,000 people, makes 1.5 million cars a year, and earns about 55 billion euros annually.
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