The MGH Report

Michael G. Haran, Proprietor

HUMAN SOCIOCULTURE EVOLUTION

Posted by on Mar 25, 2021

HUMAN SOCIOCULTURE EVOLUTION

By: Michael Haran

This is a follow-up to my previous post, The Spectrum of Human Evolution. With such a cultural divide between Americans right now, I thought taking a look at the origins human sociocultural evolution might provide some insights into how American society and culture have come to be what it is. Although some references to current American culture are made in this post, a deep dive into some of the more disturbing micro elements of American society will have to wait for another post.

I always thought that it is natural for humans to evolved culturally for the better. I saw Brown vs. the Board of Education; the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s as just part of that social evolution. It never occurred to me that the need for that legislation actually stretched back to the 15th century when the Portuguese started the African slave industry and which was also instrumental in the development of sociocultural evolution theory.

Human evolution has several elements to it. First is the intrinsic physical and cognitive that I wrote about in my previous post. The second is the more extrinsic social and cultural evolution which has allowed humans to co-exist and co-habitat to become the most dominant species on the planet.

Sociocultural evolution is defined as the permanent interplay between the evolution of social order, cultural achievements and cognitive ontogenetic development which is the development of an individual organism or behavioral feature from the earliest stage to maturity. The key concept is that of social roles that are defined as a set of social rules and role specific knowledge.

Sociocultural evolution accordingly, is defined as the enlargement and variation of roles in their social and cognitive dimension and as the variations between roles. The main theoretical thesis is the hypothesis of heterogeneity diversity. Sociocultural evolution is possible only if the degree of role autonomy in a particular society is large enough. As a computational model, a sociocultural-cognitive algorithm can capture the main features of the evolution of societies. In particular, it can show why the hypothesis of heterogeneity is so important: it explains the way of Western cult.

Although consistently being challenged, sociocultural evolution theory is based on theories of how cultures and societies change over time. It examines the permanent interplay between the evolution of the social order and cultural achievements. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to progress by increasing the complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity or a type of degeneration that can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant changes in complexity. This partially explains why America has never progressively evolved uniformly either socially or culturally especially if you consider white supremacy and hatred as degenerational.

Social evolution theory holds that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution, although at different rates, which explained why there are different types of societies existing in the world. The idea of progress led to that of fixed “stages” through which human societies progress, usually numbering three – savagery (fire, bow, pottery); barbarian (domestication of animals, agriculture, metalworking); and civilization (alphabet and writing) – but sometimes many more.

Barbarianism

Contemporary societies may be classified and ranked as more “primitive” or more “civilized.” There are a determinate number of stages between “primitive” and “civilized” (band, tribe, chiefdom, and state) and all societies progress through these stages in the same sequence, but at different rates. Many different societies have existed in the course of human history, with estimates as high as over one million separate societies; however, as of 2013, the number of current, distinct world societies had been estimated at about two hundred.

Anthropologists and sociologists often assume that human beings have natural social tendencies and that particular human social behaviors have non-genetic causes and dynamics which have been learned in social environments and through social interaction. Societies exist in complex social environments, with natural resources and constraints, and adapt themselves to these environments. It is thus inevitable that all societies change. Unilineal evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and gradually become more civilized over time; they equated the culture and technology of Western civilization with progress.

This concept explains how particulate cognitive perceptions are passed down from one generation to the next. These perceptions are continually reinforced through the human trait of attachment, acceptance and belonging. The more isolated or tribal the society, the stronger and more bias the perceptions. We sometimes refer to this phenomenon as herd mentality, brought on by repetitive peer pressure or echo chamber rhetoric.

Colonization

Some forms of early sociocultural evolution theories (mainly unilineal ones) have led to much-criticized theories like social Darwinism and scientific racism, sometimes used in the past to justify existing policies of colonialism and slavery and to justify policies such as eugenics. Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a single entity. However, most 20th-century approaches, such as multi-lineal evolution, focused on changes specific to individual societies.

 

 Multi-lineal and Uni-lineal

Multi-lineal evolution speculated that societies progressed through stages of a given culture and society and sees social development as an inevitable process. It was assumed that societies start out primitive, perhaps in a state of nature, and could progress toward something resembling industrial Europe. Societies all pass through a series of four stages: hunting and gathering; pastoralism and nomadism; agriculture, and finally a stage of commerce. This coherent view of social progress became a new discipline called sociology.

Although imperial powers settled most differences of opinion with their colonial subjects through force, increased awareness of non-Western peoples raised new questions for European scholars about the nature of society and of culture. Effective colonial  administration required some degree of understanding of other cultures.

Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution allowed Europeans to organize their new knowledge in a way that reflected and justified their increasing political and economic domination of others. Such systems saw colonized people as less evolved, and colonizing people as more evolved. This mindset is what the Confederate states used to justify their socioeconomic institution of slavery and it continues today in the U.S. concept of white supremacy.

Together, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism allowed and promoted continual revolutions in the means of production. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution reflected a belief that the changes in Europe brought by the Industrial Revolution and capitalism were improvements.

Industrialization, combined with the intense political change brought about by the French Revolution of 1789 and the U.S. Constitution, which paved the way for the dominance of democracy, forced European thinkers to reconsider some of their assumptions about how society was organized. They all agreed that the history of humanity was pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely that of social progress.

Industrial Revolution

Unilineal evolution holds that if organisms could develop over time according to discernible, deterministic laws, then it seemed reasonable that societies could as well. Human society was compared to a biological organism, and social science equivalents of concepts like variation, natural selection, and inheritance were introduced as factors resulting in the progress of societies.

The idea of progress led to the aforementioned concept of fixed “stages” through which human societies progress. The publication of Darwin’s works proved a boon to the proponents of sociocultural evolution, who saw the ideas of biological evolution as an attractive explanation for many questions about the development of society. The process of societal growth can be divided into certain stages, have beginning and eventual end, and that this growth is in fact social progress: each newer, more-evolved society is “better.”

Thus, progressivism became one of the basic ideas underlying the theory of sociocultural evolutionism. It was divided into three stages:

  • Theological stage, in which nature was mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from supernatural beings;
  • Metaphysical stage, in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure forces and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them;
  • Positive stage, in which all abstract and obscure forces are discarded, and natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship.

This progress is thought to be forced through the development of the human mind, and through increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the understanding of the world with the science-valuing society as the highest, most developed type of human organization.

 

Collective vs. Individual Evolution

One school of thought argued against government intervention as it was believed that society should evolve toward more individual freedom, differentiated between two phases of development as regards societies’ internal regulation: the “military” and “industrial” societies. The earlier (and more primitive) military society has the goal of conquest and defense, is centralized, economically self-sufficient, collectivistic, puts the good of a group over the good of an individual, uses compulsion, force and repression, and rewards loyalty, obedience and discipline.

The industrial society, in contrast, has a goal of production and trade, is decentralized, interconnected with other societies via economic relations, works through voluntary cooperation and individual self-restraint, treats the good of the individual as of the highest value, regulates the social life via voluntary relations; and values initiative, independence and innovation. The transition process from the military to industrial society is the outcome of steady evolutionary processes within the society.

These concepts can be seen in the current polarization of American society. Although evolved from the military society model, the democratic society values the overall good of as a means of stability and happiness to foster productivity and prosperity. The individual freedom model values unrestricted freedom of choice as the preferred economic system. The concept of Libertarianism defines the later. Since both, systems are necessary to for a healthy modern economy to function the divide appears to be artificial in that it’s created as a political means to obtain civil power.

 

Technology & Society

As crude as they might have been, the technological advances of the three stages of sociocultural evolution were technology none the less. Like fire, bow, pottery in the savage era, domestication of animals, agriculture and metalworking in the barbarian era and alphabet and writing in the civilization era, a link  was made between social progress and technological progress.

Technological progress was viewed as a force behind social progress, and held that any social change – in social institutions, organizations or ideologies – has its beginnings in technological change. It was the basis of Marxist theory in that materialistic factors – economic and technological – are decisive in shaping the fate of humanity.

 

Social Progression

19th-century theorists usually measured progression through one stage and the next in terms of increasing social complexity including class differentiation and a complex division of labor, or an increase in intellectual, theological, and aesthetic sophistication. These principles were used by ethnologists primarily to explain differences in religious beliefs and kinship terminologies among various societies. These sociocultural evolution concepts will be more deeply explore as I look at how family and labor has impacted, and been impacted, by the American sociocultural divide.

Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913), sometimes referred to as the “father” of American sociology, believed that the law of evolution functioned much differently in human societies than it did in the plant and animal kingdoms, and theorized that the “law of nature” had been superseded by the “law of the mind.”

He stressed that humans, driven by emotions, create goals for themselves and strive to realize them (most effectively with the modern scientific method) whereas there is no such intelligence and awareness guiding the non-human world. Plants and animals adapt to nature; man, shapes nature.

Ward regarded competition (survival of the fittest) as a destructive force, pointing out that all human institutions, traditions and laws were tools invented by the mind of man and that that mind designed them, like all tools, to “meet and checkmate” the unrestrained competition of natural forces. Ward felt that authoritarian governments repress the talents of the individual, but he believed that modern democratic societies, which minimized the role of religion and maximized that of science, could effectively support the individual in his or her attempt to fully utilize their talents and achieve happiness.

He believed that the evolutionary processes have four stages: First comes cosmogenesis, creation and evolution of the world; then, when life arises, there is biogenesis; then the development of humanity leads to anthropogenesis, which is influenced by the human mind; and last is sociogenesis, which shapes the evolutionary process itself to optimize progress, human happiness and individual self-actualization.

While Ward regarded modern societies as superior to “primitive” societies (one need only look to the impact of medical science on health and lifespan) he rejected theories of white supremacy; he supported the Out-of-Africa theory of human evolution and believed that all races and social classes were equal in talent and knowledge potential.

However, Ward did not think that evolutionary progress was inevitable and he feared the degeneration of societies and cultures, which he saw as very evident in the historical record and, based on the negative radicalization of the past four years, could be happening in the U.S. right now.

Many anthropologists and sociologist have added to the sociocultural evolution theory canon including Ferdinand Tonnies’s theory of cultural integration which was the 19th century’s version of globalization and Max Weber’s sociocultural evolution stages from a charismatic domination (Atilla the Hun); to traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism; to a legal (rational) domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy).

 

Critical Examination

The early 20th-century inaugurated a period of systematic critical examination, and rejection of the generalizations of the unilineal theories of sociocultural evolution. Cultural anthropologists such as Franz Boas (1858–1942), along with his students, including Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, are regarded as the leaders of anthropology’s rejection of classical social evolutionism. They used ethnography and more rigorous empirical methods and theories regarding “stages” of evolution were especially criticized as illusions.

Additionally, they rejected the distinction between “primitive” and “civilized” (or “modern”), pointing out that so-called primitive contemporary societies have just as much history, and were just as evolved, as so-called civilized societies. They therefore argued that any attempt to use this theory to reconstruct the histories of non-literate (no historical documents) peoples is entirely speculative and unscientific.

They observed that the postulated progression, which typically ended with a stage of civilization identical to that of modern Europe, is ethnocentric. They also pointed out that the theory assumes that societies are clearly bounded and distinct, when in fact cultural traits and forms often cross social boundaries and diffuse among many different societies and are thus an important mechanism of change.

Later critics observed that the assumption of firmly bounded societies was proposed precisely at the time when European powers were colonizing non-Western societies, and was thus self-serving. Many anthropologists and social theorists now consider unilineal cultural and social evolution a Western myth seldom based on solid empirical grounds. Critical theorists argue that notions of social evolution are simply justifications for power by the élites of society.

Finally, the devastating World Wars that occurred between 1914 and 1945 crippled Europe’s self-confidence. After millions of deaths, genocide, and the destruction of Europe’s industrial infrastructure, the idea of “progress” seemed dubious at best.

Thus, modern sociocultural evolutionism rejects most of classical social evolutionism due to various theoretical problems:

  • The theory was deeply ethnocentric – it makes heavy value judgments about different societies, with Western civilization seen as the most valuable.
  • It assumed all cultures follow the same path or progression and have the same goals.
  • It equated civilization with material culture (technology, cities, etc.)

Because social evolution was posited as a scientific theory, it was often used to support unjust and often racist social practices – particularly colonialism, slavery, and the unequal economic conditions present within industrialized Europe. Social Darwinism is especially criticized, as it purportedly led to some philosophies used by the Nazis.

Max Weber’s major works in economic sociology and the sociology of religion dealt with the rationalization, secularization, and so called “disenchantment” which he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. In sociology, rationalization is the process whereby an increasing number of social actions become based on considerations of calculation rather than on motivations derived from morality, emotion, custom, or tradition.

Rather than referring to what is genuinely “rational” or “logical,” rationalization refers to a relentless quest for goals that might actually function to the detriment of a society. Rationalization is an ambivalent aspect of modernity, manifested especially in Western society – as a behavior of the capitalist market, of rational administration in the state and bureaucracy, of the extension of modern science, and of the expansion of modern technology.

Critical theorists, as anti-positivists, are critical of the idea of a hierarchy of sciences or societies, particularly with respect to the sociological positivism. The concept of pure instrumental rationality has been critiqued to the meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself. Rationalization as a manifestation of modernity may be most closely and regrettably associated with the events of the Holocaust.

 

Modern theories

When the critique of classical social evolutionism became widely accepted, modern anthropological and sociological approaches changed respectively. Modern theories are careful to avoid unsourced, ethnocentric speculation, comparisons, or value judgments; more or less regarding individual societies as existing within their own historical contexts. These conditions provided the context for new theories such as cultural relativism and multilineal evolution.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Gordon Childe revolutionized the study of cultural evolutionism. He conducted a comprehensive pre-history account that provided scholars with evidence for African and Asian cultural transmission into Europe.

He combated scientific racism by finding the tools and artifacts of the indigenous people from Africa and Asia and showed how they influenced the technology of European culture. Evidence from his excavations countered the idea of Aryan supremacy and superiority.

Childe explained cultural evolution by his theory of divergence with modifications of convergence. He postulated that different cultures form separate methods that meet different needs, but when two cultures were in contact, they developed similar adaptations, solving similar problems.

Rejecting the theory of parallel cultural evolution, Childe found that interactions between cultures contributed to the convergence of similar aspects most often attributed to one culture and he placed emphasis on human culture as a social construct rather than products of environmental or technological contexts.

 

Neo-evolutionism

Neoevolutionism was the first in a series of modern multilineal evolution theories. It emerged in the 1930s and extensively developed in the period following the Second World War and was incorporated into both anthropology and sociology in the 1960s. It bases its theories on empirical evidence from areas of archaeology, paleontology, and historiography and tries to eliminate any references to systems of values, be it moral or cultural, instead trying to remain objective and simply descriptive. It was the neo-evolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology.

Neo-evolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. It discards the determinism argument and introduces probability, arguing that accidents and free will greatly affect the process of social evolution.

It also supports counterfactual history – asking “what if” and considering different possible paths that social evolution may take or might have taken, and thus allows for the fact that various cultures may develop in different ways, some skipping entire stages others have passed through. Neo-evolutionism stresses the importance of empirical evidence and measurable information for analyzing the process of sociocultural evolution rather than the 19th-centyury evolutionism that used value judgments and assumptions for interpreting data.

 

Technology and Sociocultural Evolution

Technology is Leslie White’s most important factor of his sociocultural evolution theory. He differentiates between five stages of human development:

  • In the first, people use the energy of their own muscles
  • In the second, they use the energy of domesticated animals
  • In the third, they use the energy of plants (agricultural revolution)
  • In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas
  • In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy

Julian Steward rejected the 19th-century notion of progress, and instead called attention to the Darwinian notion of “adaptation”, arguing, as stated above, that all societies had to adapt to their environment in some way. He argued that different adaptations could be studied through the examination of the specific resources a society exploited, the technology the society relied on to exploit these resources, and the organization of human labor.

He further argued that different environments and technologies would require different kinds of adaptations, and that as the resource base or technology changed, so too would a culture. In other words, cultures do not change according to some inner logic, but rather in terms of a changing relationship with a changing environment.

Cultures therefore would not pass through the same stages in the same order as they changed; rather, they would change in varying ways and directions. He questioned the possibility of creating a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity; however, he argued that anthropologists are not limited to describing specific existing cultures.

He believed that it is possible to create theories analyzing typical common culture, representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of given culture he pointed to technology and economics, but noted that there are secondary factors, like political system, ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at the same time.

Marshall Sahlins divided the evolution of societies into ‘general‘ and ‘specific.General evolution is the tendency of cultural and social systems to increase in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to environment. However, as the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction and a diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to develop in different ways (specific evolution), as various elements are introduced to them in different combinations and at different stages of evolution.

Gerhard Lenski called his work the ecological-evolutionary theory. He views technological progress as the most basic factor in the evolution of societies and cultures. Lenski focuses on information – its amount and uses. The more information and knowledge a given society has from the shaping of its natural environment, the more advanced it is.

He distinguishes four stages of human development, based on advances in the history of communication:

  • In the first stage, information is passed by genes.
  • In the second, as humans gain awareness of their feelings & sensations, they learn and pass information through their experiences.
  • In the third, humans start using signs and develop logic.
  • In the fourth, they create symbols and develop language and writing.

Advancements in the technology of communication translate into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of goods, social inequality and other spheres of social life.

 

Sociobiology

Sociobiology departs perhaps the furthest from classical social evolutionism. It was introduced by Edward Wilson and followed his adaptation of evolutionary theory to the field of social sciences. Wilson pioneered the attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviors such as altruism (selfless concern for the wellbeing of others), aggression, and nurturance. In doing so, Wilson sparked one of the greatest scientific controversies of the 20th century.

The current theory of evolution, the modern evolutionary synthesis (or Neo-Darwinism), explains that evolution of species occurs through a combination of natural selection and genetics. Essentially, this modern synthesis introduced the connection between the two important discoveries of gene evolution and selection as the main mechanism of evolution. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely related to the fields of human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology.

Sociobiology has remained highly controversial as it contends genes explain specific human behaviors, although sociobiologists describe this role as a very complex and often unpredictable interaction between nature and nurture. Some biologists have taken a critical view that genes play a direct role in human behavior.

Since the rise of evolutionary psychology, another school of thought, Dual Inheritance Theory, has emerged in the past 25 years that applies the mathematical standards of Population genetics to modeling the adaptive and selective principles of culture.

Robert Boyd at UCLA and Peter Richerson at UC Davis  view, cultural evolution, operating on socially learned information, exists on a separate but co-evolutionary track from genetic evolution, and while the two are related, cultural evolution is more dynamic, rapid, and influential on human society than genetic evolution.

Dual Inheritance Theory has the benefit of providing unifying territory for a “nature and nurture” paradigm and accounts for more accurate phenomenon in evolutionary theory applied to culture, such as randomness effects (drift), concentration dependency, “fidelity” of evolving information systems, and lateral transmission through communication.  

 

Theory of Modernization

Theories of modernization have been developed and popularized in 1950s and 1960s and are closely related to the dependency theory and development theory.

They combine the previous theories of sociocultural evolution with practical experiences and empirical research, especially those from the era of decolonization.

The theory states that:

  • Western countries are the most developed, and the rest of the world (mostly former colonies) is in the earlier stages of development, and will eventually reach the same level as the Western world.
  • Development stages go from the traditional societies to developed ones.
  • Third World countries have fallen behind with their social progress and need to be directed on their way to becoming more advanced.

Developing from classical social evolutionism theories, the theory of modernization stresses the modernization factor: many societies are simply trying (or need) to emulate the most successful societies and cultures. It also states that it is possible to do so, thus supporting the concepts of social engineering and that the developed countries can and should help those less developed, directly or indirectly. The theory of modernization has been subject to some criticism similar to that levied against classical social evolutionism, especially for being too ethnocentric, one-sided and focused on the Western world and its culture.

 

Punctuated Equilibrium 

 The status of a human society rests on the productivity of food production. Food productivity changes very little for stable societies, but increases during transitions. When productivity and especially food productivity can no longer be increased, man will have achieved a stable automated society. Punctuated Equilibrium Theory states that in order for human societies to have a stable cultural and social future they first must have a stable society, and second, then a transition into a society with greater complexity.

This model would claim:

  • Mankind has had a stable animal society,
  • Then a transition to a stable tribal society,
  • Then another transition to a stable peasant society and
  • Currently is in a transitional industrial society.

 

Political perspectives

The Cold War period was marked by rivalry between two superpowers, both of which considered themselves to be the most highly evolved cultures on the planet. The USSR painted itself as a socialist society which emerged from class struggle, destined to reach the state of communism, while sociologists in the United States (such as Talcott Parsons) argued that the freedom and prosperity of the United States were a proof of a higher level of sociocultural evolution of its culture and society.

At the same time, decolonization created newly independent countries who sought to become more developed – a model of progress and industrialization which was itself a form of sociocultural evolution. There is, however, a tradition in European social theory arguing that this progression coincides with a loss of human freedom and dignity.

At the height of the Cold War, this tradition merged with an interest in ecology to influence an activist culture in the 1960s. This movement produced a variety of political and philosophical programs which emphasized the importance of bringing society and the environment into harmony.

 

Technological perspectives

 Schematic timeline of information and replicators in the biosphere: Major evolutionary transitions in information processing

Many argue that the next stage of sociocultural evolution consists of a merger with technology, especially information processing technology. Several cumulative major transitions of evolution have transformed life through key innovations in information storage and replication, including  RNA,  DNA,  multicellularity, and also language and culture as inter-human information processing systems.

In this sense it can be argued that the carbon-based biosphere has generated a cognitive system (humans) capable of creating technology that will result in a comparable evolutionary transition.

Digital information has reached a similar magnitude to information in the biosphere. It increases exponentially, which exhibits high-fidelity replication, evolves through differential fitness, is expressed through artificial intelligence (AI), and has facility for virtually limitless recombination.

Like previous evolutionary transitions, the potential symbiosis between biological and digital information will reach a critical point where these codes could compete via natural selection. Alternatively, this fusion could create a higher-level superorganism employing a low-conflict division of labor in performing informational tasks…humans have already embraced fusions of biology and technology.

We spend most of our waking time communicating through digitally mediated channels, most transactions on the stock market are executed by automated trading algorithms, and our electric grids are in the hands of artificial intelligence. With one in three marriages in America beginning online, digital algorithms are also taking a role in human pair bonding and reproduction.

 

Anthropological Perspectives

Current political theories of the new tribalists consciously mimic ecology and the life-ways of indigenous peoples, augmenting them with modern sciences.

Ecoregional Democracy attempts to confine the “shifting groups,” or tribes, within “more or less clear boundaries” that a society inherits from the surrounding ecology, to the borders of a naturally occurring ecoregion.

Progress can proceed by competition between but not within tribes, and it is limited by ecological borders or by Natural Capitalism incentives which attempt to mimic the pressure of natural selection on a human society by forcing it to adapt consciously to scarce energy or material resources

Gaianism, an earth-centered philosophical, holistic, and spiritual belief that shares expressions with earth religions and paganism while not identifying exclusively with any specific one, argues that societies evolve deterministically to play a role in the ecology of their biosphere, or else die off as failures due to competition from more efficient societies exploiting nature’s leverage.

Thus, some have appealed to theories of sociocultural evolution to assert that optimizing the ecology and the social harmony of closely knit groups is more desirable or necessary than the progression to “civilization.”

A 2002 poll of experts on Neo-arctic and Neo-tropic indigenous peoples (reported in Harper’s magazine) revealed that all of them would have preferred to be a typical New World person in the year 1491, prior to any European contact, rather than a typical European of that time.

This approach has been criticized by pointing out that there are a number of historical examples of indigenous peoples doing severe environmental damage (such as the deforestation of Easter Island and the extinction of mammoths in North America) and that proponents of the goal have been trapped by the European stereotype of the noble savage.

 

Conclusion

Today most anthropologists reject 19th-century notions of progress and the three assumptions “stages” of unilineal evolution. They focus on the relationship between a culture and its environment to explain different aspects of a culture. That said, most modern cultural anthropologists have adopted a general systems approach, examining cultures as emergent systems and arguing that one must consider the whole social environment, which includes political and economic relations in a specific culture and among other cultures.

 

References:

Sociocultural Evolution: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution

Sociocultural Evolution and Cognitive Ontogenesis: A Sociocultural-Cognitive Algorithm (2003) https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CMOT.0000026584.19223.ef

 

 

 

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GMO Primer

Posted by on May 9, 2014

GMO Primer

A few weeks ago I attended the Piner Highs School open house for their new high tech science building. The $3.6 million dollar structure (the full size planetarium is awesome), officially known as the Science Position Astronomy Research Quest Center, or SPARQ, was built to house the schools STEM (science, technology, engineering and Math) classes. To see the new facility go to: http://sparqatphs.com/index.html

GMO #34

Testing for GMO

I came upon a group of fifteen-year old students at the Health Science and Biotechnology table who were eager to show me how to test a food sample to see if it had been genetically modified. They showed me the micropipette in which the mashed food sample is placed along with a gel solution to separate the DNA from the rest of the cellular components. Simply stated, the DNA then needs to be copied many times because more DNA than is found in the food is needed for testing. This is done through a procedure known as Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR in which the food DNA is unwound. The last step is to visualize the DNA and see if the DNA has been modified. This is usually done by gel electrophoresis.  These students are a lot smarter than I was at fifteen – than I am now for that matter.

 To really get into how to test for GMOs go to: http://www.hudsonalpha.org

At lot about GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) has been in the news lately and you know the subject is gaining main stream consciousness when a high school STEM course is teaching how to test for the presence of GMOs in their food.

GMO #2

California Prop 32 Campaign Poster

A California initiative, Prop 37, which would have required GMO labeling of all food by retailers and food companies, was defeated last November and California State Senator Noreen Evans is trying to get the job done through the California legislature by introducing a bill requiring all consumer food must contain GMO labeling. In Vermont they just passed legislation (5/8/2014) making the state the first to require food producers to label products made with generic engineering. The law won’t go into effect for two years and producer lawsuits are expected. Vermont Gov. signs GMO Labeling into Law http://radioboston.wbur.org/2014/05/08/vermont-gmo-labeling.

All GMOs are not bad. The GMO process in nature is known as evolution although nature’s process takes considerably longer (thousands and even millions of years) thanGMO #8 the man-made kind. Technically GMOs are experimental plants or animals that have been genetically engineered in a laboratory with DNA from other plants, animals, bacteria or virus.

There are two main reasons for GMOs. First, seed producers modify their seeds to make them resistant to their brands of herbicides; and second, seed producers modify plants to contain built-in pesticides. Today, GMO ingredients are found in 80% of the packaged foods in the U.S. GMO crops are also added to processed foods as oils and sweeteners.

To make a GMO, three main components are required: the gene you want to transfer, the organism you want to put it into (target species), and a vector to carry the gene into GMO #3the target species cells. The steps are relatively straightforward, but can be technically challenging. The gene to be transferred (trans-gene) must be cut out and isolated from the original organism. This is usually done by restriction enzymes, which are like molecular scissors that recognize specific sequences in the DNA and cut it at those places.

To really get into how to make a GMO go to: http://www.hudsonalpha.org

For some, the idea of GMO food is a good because the modifications allow crops to become resistant to drought and infestations, letting more people have more regular meals. Some research even shows that the world produces 17% more food than it needs to produce to provide each current human with three meals per day.

GMO #33

Rats with tumors

Others look at genetically modified foods as dangerous. From allergic reactions to potential intestinal damage, many people wish to avoid GMO foods because of animal studies that have shown changes in internal cell structure, abnormal tumor growth, and unexpected deaths that have occurred.

Another reason people distrust GMO foods is that they are so new to our food chain. People feel that they are the “lab rat” generation for the big Ag companies to see what happens to humans after a generation of eating GMO foods.

If you want to know more about this go to: http://organicconnectmag.com

When it comes to the mass the mass production of GMO foods the benefits need to outweigh the risks. In some areas, having access to GMO foods may make sense because resources are thin and people are dying from hunger. However, in other areas the risks may outweigh the rewards. So what exactly are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?

Pros of Genetically Modified Foods:

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GMO vegetables

1. Better overall quality and taste

Through the modification of foods, the flavors can be enhanced. Peppers can become spicier or sweeter. Corn can become sweeter. Difficult flavors can become more palatable.

2. More resistant to disease

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Corn without GMO

Plants and animals that have been genetically modified can become more resistant to the unexpected problems of disease. Think of it as a vaccine for that plant or animal, except that the vaccine is encoded into the genetics instead of a shot given to the immune system.

3. More nutrition benefits

GMO foods can have vitamins and minerals added to them through genetic modifications to provide greater nutritive benefits to those who eat them. This is especiallyGMO #19 common in developing countries that don’t always have the access to needed resources.

Cons of Genetically Modified Foods

Here are the primary problems with GMO foods:

1. Environmental damageGMO #21

By growing plants or raising livestock in environmental conditions that normally wouldn’t support them, there is the potential of irrevocably damaging that environment. This is often seen through GMO crossbreeding – weeds, for example, that can be crossed with GMO plants can often become resistant to herbicides, creating the need for more GMO efforts.

2. There is no economic value

GMO foods take just as long to mature and take just as much effort to grow, meaning that there is no real economic value to growing GMO foods when compared to non-GMO foods. In addition, growers have seen little economic gain from the use of GMO crops.

3. A growth in allergic reactions in the general population

GMO #25Time and time again, studies have shown that the consumption of GMO foods increases the risks of food-based allergies in people. If someone develops an allergy to soy because of GMO efforts, then if livestock eats that GMO soy as well, that person would have a high probability of an allergic reaction from eating the animal meat. Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

 

The following is brief timeline of the development of GMO:

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In 1935, a Russian scientist, Andrei Nikolaevitch Belozersky, isolates pure DNA.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick publish their discovery of the three-dimensional double helix structure of DNA. This discovery will eventually lead to the ability of scientists to identify and “splice” genes from one kind of organism into the DNA of another.

GMO #28

In 1973, the idea for man-made DNA, or Recombinant DNA (rDNA), comes from a grad student at Stanford University Medical School. Professor Herbert Boyer and a few of his biologist colleagues develop it.

In 1975, a group of biologists get together (the Asilomar Conference) with a few lawyers and doctors to create guidelines for the safe use of genetically engineered DNA.  GMO #27

 In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court rules (5-4) that genetically altered life forms can be patented. The decision allowed the Exxon Oil Company to patent an oil-eating microorganism.  

In 1982, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first genetically engineered drug, Genentech’s Humulin, a form of human insulin produced by E. coli bacteria. This becomes the first consumer product developed through modern bioengineering.

GMO #29

In 1987, the first field tests of genetically engineered crops (tobacco and tomato) were conducted in the United States.

In 1992, the FDA declared that genetically engineered foods are “not inherently dangerous” and do not require special regulation.

In 1994, FDA approves the “Flavr Savr” tomato for sale on grocery store shelves. The delayed-ripening tomato has a longer shelf life than conventional tomatoes.

GMO#30

FlavrSavr Tomato

In 1996, weeds resistant to glyphosate, the herbicide used with many GMO crops, are detected in Australia. Research shows that the super weeds are seven to 11 times more resistant to glyphosate than the standard susceptible population.

In 1997, the European Union rules in favor of mandatory labeling on all GMO food products, including animal feed.

GMO #35In 1999, Dr. Zhiyuan Gong, at the National University of Singapore, injected a green fluorescent jellyfish gene into a zebra fish embryo, allowing it to integrate into the fish’s genome.  The goal was to develop a fish that could detect pollution by selectively fluorescing in the presence of environmental toxins. The fish are now sold worldwide as Glofish.

 In 1999, over 100 million acres worldwide are planted with genetically engineered seeds. The marketplace begins embracing GMO technology.

  In 2000,International Biosafety Protocol is approved by 130 countries at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montréal, Canada. The protocol agrees upon labeling of genetically engineered crops, but still needs to be ratified by 50 nations before it goes into effect.

GMO #31In 2003, a Bt-toxin-resistant caterpillar-cum-moth, Helicoverpa zea, is found feasting on GMO Bt cotton crops in the southern United States. In less than a decade, the bugs have adapted to the genetically engineered toxin produced by the modified plants.

In 2011, research in eastern Quebec finds Bt toxins in the blood of pregnant women and shows evidence that the toxin is passed to fetuses.

GMO #32

In 2012, French farmer Paul Francois sues Monsanto for chemical poisoning he claims was caused by its pesticide Lasso, part of the Roundup Ready line of products. Francois wins and sets a new precedent for future cases.

 In 2014, Monsanto’s patent on the Roundup Ready line of genetically engineered seeds will end in two years. In 2009, Monsanto introduced Roundup 2 with a new patent set to make the first-generation seed obsolete.

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