Brains are a necessary but not sufficient condition for the evolution of culture. There is no ground zero for culture. All animals learn and social animals learn from each other. Social interactions create culture. There was never a time in history or prehistory where lone primates individually decided to come together to form the original primate culture. Primates are born into groups. The brain has evolved to make use of the tools that history has given us, cumulatively. Our brains would not function as evolution has made us if we hadn’t had the rich resources of culture informing our cognitive development. This should not be the least controversial. So let’s move on and see what the implications are, especially as regards the irrational rejection of the non controversial facts that our brains are wired to be cultural (because, again, brains and culture coevolved).

I don't see that you have provided any supporting claims, hence "naysaying". — Izat So

What I'm asking you for is supporting claims. Why do I have to supply them when you don't, when you're the one initiating claims?

The post was in support of my view that the brain comes first, culture comes second. Then, available culture (from a particular brain or other brains in general) is available for further cultural processing -- by brains.

I hope he wasn't disputing that, but it seems like he was.

So let’s move on and see what the implications are, especially as regards the irrational rejection of the non controversial facts that our brains are wired to be cultural (because, again, brains and culture coevolved). — Izat So

Can the idea that the organic structure and functioning of the brain coevolved with culture be tested?

The content of the brain clearly changes with exposure to culture (and everything else) but that doesn't mean "evolution". Homo sapiens have been a mobile hunter-gathering species for 15,000 to maybe 300,000 years. Can we show that culture, specifically, has played a role in selection? I'm not claiming that such a relationship can not be demonstrated, just that I don't know that it has, or can be.

At this point, a million and more years since culture was first invented by brains, it is impossible to disentangle culture from biology in our time and place. I can't tell whether the people around me (or around you) are behaving the way they do because of culture or because of biology, or some combination of both. Nobody else can either. Even mental illnesses like bi-polar disorder which may be inherited and which appear to be biological in origin, are affected by cultural factors.

So, a question: If we could bring someone forward in time from 150,000 years ago -- a newborn baby -- and raise them in the contemporary culture, do you think that their brain could process the vastly more complex culture of today than a band of hunter gatherers 300,000 years ago?

My guess (no proof, of course -- time travel is incredibly expensive) is that the baby would grow up and do just fine -- might even turn out to be an urban sophisticate/kulture kritik/bon vivant. Or, he might be a successful criminal, or had it we time traveled him 45 years ago, Teresa May's successor as conservative UK Prime Minister -- all sorts of possibilities. Maybe that's where Trump came from?

if by “the brain comes first” you mean as a necessary condition of there being culture at all, then who would disagree? On the other had if your view is that the brain material primacy in the sense that it requires you to posit a time when there were loners who decided to form the original primate culture, then of course it is preposterous.

Culture exists across brains and in laws and in networks of roads and in the various media from mythical narratives to digital media that function as external memory storage, etc. Being the arena or ongoing history it extends beyond any living brains into the mists of primal our past and to into our future. It is distributed across media, across generations.

We are not merely a collection of individual brains, regardless of how much some of us like to think of ourselves as thoroughly self-authoring and autonomous. We use the tools that our brains have evolved to be able to use insofar as our hominid brains have coevolved with culture over millions of years.

if by “the brain comes first” you mean as a necessary condition of there being culture at all, then who would disagree? On the other had if your view is that the brain material primacy in the sense that it requires you to posit a time when there were loners who decided to form the original primate culture, then of course it is preposterous. — Izat So

Primates became a thing around 55 million years ago. Presumably there was a time (about 8 million years ago, at least) when the proto-human and the proto-monkey lineage split apart. The common ancestor probably did not have had a culture. It had biological traits and behaviours. Initially, the early creatures in our branch of the tree would not have had culture either. It would have had a collection of biological traits and behaviours.

I don't know how social Lucy's species was. We were not producing culture, at the time. Culture would have to wait until our brains were big enough to carry out the tasks of culture creation and cultural reproduction. We may not have been able to talk yet, either. Lucy's brain (3 million years ago) was about a third the size of ours, and she represented 3 or 4 million years of development.

So yes, at some point in our evolutionary history (about 2.5 million years ago) forebears came along who could make a tool out of material that was not a tool (like a rock), and pass that information on, and then take that information on into the future. That's when culture production began, and it was probably later, rather than sooner.

We don't know when speech began. We don't know what it was like. But there was a beginning to the use of language -- albeit very limited. Maybe it began with signs, or sounds, or both. Don't know. Can't know. But 300,000 years ago, it is likely that languages were fully deployed--another cultural invention.

Occasionally we find artifacts--a sea shell with a hole drilled in it and stained red--that indicate that objects were being fashioned for some nonfunctional purpose (decoration?) maybe 40,000 years ago. 25,000 years ago we find the cave paintings.

Nobody would claim that shell decoration, cave painting, or gathering around a fire was "invented" by one person and then was picked up by others. But cultural behaviours had to begin at some time--maybe in multiple places.

We are not merely a collection of individual brains, regardless of how much some of us like to think of ourselves as thoroughly self-authoring and autonomous. — Izat So

True enough. We may not even be "conscious" the way we think we are; we may be pretty much the sum of deterministic forces and events. As somebody once said, "We've been dethroned. Copernicus showed us that we were not the centre of the cosmos. Darwin showed us we were descended from apes. Then Freud showed us we were not even in charge of our own minds."

Even before tools there were hierarchies and related common understandings, danger cries, etc. Any social animal has a culture.

Here’s something:

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Renfrew-Cognitive-Archaeology-Symbolic-Storage-Mind.pdf

Just watched the full lecture. It was nice. Still unsure what you’re actually asking in the OP though. Hope you can reiterate the questions posed so I can actually attempt to address them.

I tend to call the ‘mimesis’ referred to as ‘kinesthetic language’ - simply because I came to this conclusion myself prior to reading the term in Renfrew’s work that references Donald.

I’d recommend reading “The Sacred and The Profane” by Eliade. Eliade can be quite heavy to read sometimes, but that particular book is short and less of a pure scholarly (not too robotic). The point on sedentary life is touched on by both Eliade and Renfrew.

I bought three books a year or so ago that compliment each other really nicely when read in together (The Sacred and The Profane, Interpretations of Cultures - Geertz, and Structural Anthropology - Levi-Strauss).

If you have any recommendations I’d be delighted to hear what they are.

Thanks

WELL, I don't really disagree with you, up to a point. But "any social animal has a culture" is a bridge too far. Lions and wolves, porpoises and bees all cooperate, but that doesn't mean they have a "culture". Yes, there are hierarchies, but again that isn't cultural unless it is. What I mean is, ant hills have hierarchies; the hierarchy is encoded by genes. Same with bees. Lions and wolves hunt the way they do, and porpoises herd fish the way they do, because it's encoded.

There are some rare instances of animals (macaque primates) doing a cultural thing: Some macaques started washing the dirt off sweet potatoes before eating them. That was a novel behavior. Some other macaques copied them. One macaque taught it's young to wash the potatoes. That's not quite culture, but it is heading in that direction.

You seem to be more on the side of learned behaviour and culture. I'm more on the side of instinct -- even for people. Some of us believe that much of our behaviour is genetically encoded. People learn language whether they want to or not. They just start absorbing it. It's instinctual. so on and so forth

Depends how you define ‘culture’. Birds certainly have different ‘dialects’ of song specific to habitually learned patterns in certain regions - and yes, they’ve moved chicks from one region to another to show their songs aren’t innate but learnt.

In the lecture provided there is also a distinction made between “what we call language” and communication (quoting Merlin Donald there). When it comes to what we generally call ‘language’ different species of animals possess one, or more, attributes of communication that humans possess. We just happen to have all of these communication capacities combined. I wouldn’t agree that ‘language’ - in this here general sense - is required for ‘culture’ to develop. I would say a certain degree of interaction with concepts of time is required.

For starters verbal thought is not required for ‘thinking’. This is something MANY people struggle with (believe it or not!)

Birds certainly have different ‘dialects’ of song specific to habitually learned patterns in certain regions - and yes, they’ve moved chicks from one region to another to show their songs aren’t innate but learnt. — I like sushi

And elephants, because their elders are being killed, are less socialized and males have been causing all sorts of problems with other elephants, humans, and even raping rhinos. IOW since they have not been brought up well, they act like humans who are products of bad or neglectful parenting may act: with greater tendencies to violence and problems being social. This is cultural and nurture. Any social mammal raised alone, that is without the normal socialization with others of its group, will lack a set of skills and behaviors. IOW it lacks culture.

Animals are more nature than we are, hence they can do things like start walking right out of the womb in some cases, but they still have cultural aspects, as you are saying.

Lions and wolves hunt the way they do, and porpoises herd fish the way they do, because it's encoded. — Bitter Crank

Without being socialized by adults animals like these would lack all sorts of social and even skill tools (behavioral patterns). They are not hardwired for everything. Much more than us, but not at all completely.

Animals are more nature than we are,

If I was to follow that kind of logic I’d end up saying rocks are more natural than animals and plants.

Can the idea that the organic structure and functioning of the brain coevolved with culture be tested? — Bitter Crank

Merlin Donald's approach is to see culture evolving in stages that have ultimately allowed humans an open-ended repertoire of behaviours. He draws from anthropology, archaeology, genetics and neuroscience to defend his position. I could not replicate his arguments adequately in this space but a reasonably short essay might interest you in which Donald addresses how the brain evolved with culture and provide solid reasons for thinking that it would have to have done so. "An Evolutionary Approach to Culture" in The Axial Age and its Consequences, eds Bellah and Joas. 47-75.

You seem to be more on the side of learned behaviour and culture. I'm more on the side of instinct -- even for people. Some of us believe that much of our behaviour is genetically encoded. People learn language whether they want to or not. They just start absorbing it. It's instinctual. so on and so forth — Bitter Crank

The fact that we can learn it is because our brains evolved to be able to represent and share things symbolically and these repertoires exist in the "external memory storage" enabled by culture, our shared distributed cognitive space . It is culture through which infants are socialized. (Even deaf children realize communication of ideas is possible as they can observe people. Helen Keller took time to realize that Annie Sullivan was communicating something but learning took off once she understood.) Voluntary behaviour is enabled by culture. The remarkable thing about humans is that much of our repertoire is not encoded, we have the open-ended capacity to learn and draw on and add to our cultural repertoire. Probably about the only thing you could say was hardwired in humans are all the things that give us the great capacity to adapt.

I'm glad you liked the lecture. I will follow up your recommendations. I recently read Laland, Darwin's Unfinished Symphony and Morris, Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels. Did you read Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution?

If I was to follow that kind of logic I’d end up saying rocks are more natural than animals and plants. — I like sushi

Well, if you uncharitably took the line out of context. I meant as opposed to nurture. In the how much they behave in certain ways due to nature vs. nurture, they are more determined by nature, as it is distinguished from nurture in such discussions.

It is culture through which infants are socialized. — Izat So

And once the word social is applicable to an animal, there is culture. I don't know if bees are social. But the social mammals are. And if they are not raised in a way to learn what being a member of social group is, they will fail at it. They will lack the knowledge of cultural cues and tools.

I’ve not read the last one you mentioned. It’s on my shopping list :)

My interest in anthropology is particularly focused on the development and origins of religion.

Our flexibility in making use of cultural tools is what distinguishes us from other animals. They copy, we practice and improve.

Still unsure what you’re actually asking in the OP though. Hope you can reiterate the questions posed so I can actually attempt to address them. — I like sushi

In a nutshell: Why do people mistrust the idea that we are thoroughly socially informed to the point of denying it, even given that it's obvious and culture is what allows us to be us?

So far most have said they don't deny it, others have denied it but are not interested in providing any reasons.

↪Coben Our flexibility in making use of cultural tools is what distinguishes us from other animals. They copy, we practice and improve. — Izat So

I hope you understood that I was supporting your position. Animals to improve things they learn, certainly many of the social mammals do. This is cultural. IOW I am supporting the idea that this is a co-evolution between culture and brains, say, but pointing we are not alone in this. Yes, we are vastly more plastic in our learning systems.