Here's why: Culture is group-oriented, and people in those groups talk to, learn from and imitate one another. These group behaviors allow people to pass on adaptations they learned through culture faster than genes can transmit similar survival benefits. An individual can learn skills and information from a nearly unlimited number of people in a small amount of time and, in turn, spread that information to many others. And the more people available to learn from, the better. Large groups solve problems faster than smaller groups, and intergroup competition stimulates adaptations that might help those groups survive. As ideas spread, cultures develop new traits.In contrast, a person only inherits genetic information from two parents and racks up relatively few random mutations in their eggs or sperm, which takes about 20 years to be passed on to their small handful of children. That's just a much slower pace of change.
- key observation
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why cultural evolution is too fast for genetic evolution
- Culture is group-oriented, and people in those groups talk to, learn from and imitate one another.
- These group behaviors allow people to pass on adaptations they learned through culture faster than genes can transmit similar survival benefits.
- An individual can learn skills and information from a nearly unlimited number of people in a small amount of time
- and, in turn, spread that information to many others.
- And the more people available to learn from, the better.
- Large groups solve problems faster than smaller groups,
- and intergroup competition stimulates adaptations that might help those groups survive.
-
As ideas spread, cultures develop new traits.
-
In contrast, a person only inherits genetic information from two parents
- and racks up relatively few random mutations in their eggs or sperm, which takes about 20 years to be passed on to their small handful of children.
- That's just a much slower pace of change.