LAC 1000C Lecture Notes - Cultural Evolution
28 Jul 2022
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Document Summary
In order to better understand culture it is useful to closely examine its characteristics and their ramifications. Culture has allowed the global human population to grow from less than 10 million people shortly after the end of the last ice age to more than 6. 5 million people as of today. Culture has been a highly successful adaptive mechanism for our species. It has given us a major selective advantage in the competition for survival with other life forms. We have developed new survival related cultural skills and technologies at a faster rate than natural selection could alter our bodies to adapt to the environmental challenges that confronted us. The fact that cultural evolution can occur faster than biological evolution has significantly modify the effect of natural selection on humans. Every human generation potentially can discover new things and invent better technologies. The new cultural skills and knowledge are added only onto what was learned in previous generations.
