Cultural Evolution

By now we know that culture is an aspect that allows to pass on information, ideas, beliefs, etc, onto one generation to the next. As information is passed onto each generation through cultural transmission that information can be modified. This is the idea of cultural evolution. It starts with a cultural invention that can be improved upon. The easiest thing that I can think of to explain this is that thing you see absorbing all the attention of every teenager—that’s right, the cell phone! The cell phone first started out as an invention, and year after year it developed into a faster, slimmer, shiny piece of technology. I can say this for myself because I am now on my, what, 8^th cell phone? And with each new cell phone I own there is some sort of change to it that makes it better. Now, that’s not to say that some cultural invention is always improved on. In some cultures there are useless cultural events (or inventions, however you want to look at it), that for some reason seem to stick around while providing no benefit to us humans. One event that I can think of that I learned about in a Psychology course (Mechanisms of Pain) I took last term talked about a cultural event known as Hook Swinging. In some cultures a higher status person is chosen to swing above and across its community, via a string that is attached to sharp hooks that are stabbed into the back of the person. They are held up hundreds of feet in the air simply by a couple of hooks. What seems like an extremely painful event, and an even that really serves no purpose is still well alive and practiced. This is an example that can be used to show the difference between two very different forms of evolution; culture and biological evolution. Cultural events may continue even though they serve no purpose or are harmful to humans, while biological events that are harmful to humans will abruptly stop, it will not evolve into humans. An interesting concept to think about is that because of technological evolution we are now more than ever able to connect with other cultures than our own. This means that we are able to not only share the ideas/beliefs between our own people, but through to other cultures. Social transmission has spread vastly and cultures are becoming interconnected. This interconnectedness can then go on to create even more evolution because of the fact that we can share more ideas with more people allowing our psychological process to evolve and expand!