MODULE: UNDERSTANDING CULTURE AND SOCIETY

CHAPTER 3: HUMAN BIOCULTURAL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

OBJECTIVES:

✓ Trace the biological and cultural evolution of early to modern

humans
✓ Demonstrate an understanding of the role of culture in human
adaptation
✓ Explore the significance of human material remains and
artefactual evidence in interpreting cultural and social, including
political and economic, processes

T LEARN!

Evolution

Evolution is a scientific theory that was proposed

by Charles Darwin. A scientific theory gives explanations
and predictions for naturally occurring phenomena
based on observations and experimentations. This type
of theory attempts to explain how events seen in the
natural world work.

The central argument of Darwin's theory of

evolution starts from the existence of hereditary
variation. Experience with animal and plant
breeding demonstrates that variations can be developed
that are "useful to man."

**Different Types of Evolution

1. Convergent Evolution

- When the same adaptations evolve independently, under similar selection

pressures.

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- For example, flying insects, birds and bats have all evolved the ability to fly,
but independently of each other.

2. Co-evolution

- When two species or groups of species have evolved alongside each other
where one adapts to changes in the other.
- For example, flowering plants and pollinating insects such as bees.

3. Adaptive Radiation

- When a species splits into a number of new forms when a change in the
environment makes new resources available or creates new environmental
challenges.
- For example, finches on the Galapagos Islands have developed different
shaped beaks to take advantage of the different kinds of food available on
different islands.

**Biological Evolution

- It is defined as any genetic change in a population that is inherited over

several generations. These changes may be small or large, noticeable or not
so noticeable.
- Biological evolution is the process of change and diversification of organisms
over time, and it affects all aspects of their lives4morphology, physiology,
behavior, and ecology.
- A change on the genetic level of a population is defined as a small-scale
change and is called microevolution. Biological evolution also includes the
idea that all of life is connected and can be traced back to one common
ancestor. This is called macroevolution.

**Natural Selection

- It is the process by which biological evolutionary changes take place.

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- Natural selection acts on populations and not individuals.

It is based on the following concepts:

• Individuals in a population have different traits that can be inherited.

• These individuals produce more young than the environment can support.
• The individuals in a population that are best suited to their environment will leave
more offspring, resulting in a change in the genetic makeup of a population.

**Human evolution

- It is the process by which human beings developed on Earth from now-

extinct primates.
- Viewed zoologically, we humans are Homo sapiens, a culture-bearing
upright-walking species that lives on the ground and very likely first evolved
in Africa about 315,000 years ago.
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- We are now the only living members of what many zoologists refer to as the
human tribe, Hominini, but there is abundant fossil evidence to indicate that
we were preceded for millions of years by other hominins, such
as Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, and other species of Homo, and that our
species also lived for a time contemporaneously with at least one other
member of our genus, H. neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals).
The primary resource for detailing the path of human evolution will always
be fossil specimens. Certainly, the trove of fossils from Africa and Eurasia indicates
that, unlike today, more than one species of our family has lived at the same time for
most of human history. The nature of specific fossil specimens and species can be
accurately described, as can the location where they were found and the period of time
when they lived.

**Cultural Evolution

- It refers to the change of culture over time.

- If we define culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior
that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching,
imitation and other forms of social transmission,= cultural evolution is
fundamentally just the change of culture over time.

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- The core idea of cultural evolution is that cultural change constitutes an

evolutionary process that shares fundamental similarities with 3 but also
differs in key ways from 3 genetic evolution.

**Sociocultural Evolution

- It is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time,

eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from
the ancestral form".

**Sociocultural Development

- Traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a society or culture.

The members of this society study culture change using the concepts and
methods pioneered by Darwin in the nineteenth century and subsequent evolutionary
theorists. In this conception, culture constitutes a system of inherited variation that
changes over time in response to various directional and non-directional processes.
Societies can be thought of as a population of individuals that we can characterize in
terms of the frequency of the cultural variants individuals express in the population at
any point in time or as patterns of cultural variation among individuals within groups.

**How Did Humans Evolve?

Primates, like humans, are mammals. Around ten to twelve million years ago, the
ancestral primate lineage split through speciation from one common ancestor into two
major groups. Members of one group were the early version of what we know today as
the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos in Africa, orangutans in Asia). They

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mostly remained in forest with an arboreal lifestyle, meaning they live in trees. Great
apes are also quadrupeds which means they move around with four legs on the ground.

The other group evolved in a different way. They became terrestrial, meaning
they live on land and not in trees. From being quadrupeds, they evolved to bipeds,
meaning they move around on their two back legs. In addition, the size of their brain
increased. This is the group that, through evolution, gave rise to the modern current
humans.

Many fossils found in Africa are from

the genus named Australopithecus (which means southern ape). This genus is
extinct, but fossil studies revealed interesting
features about their adaptation toward a
terrestrial lifestyle.

In Ethiopia (East Africa) there is a site

called Hadar, where several fossils of different
animal species were found. Among those
fossils was Australopithecus afarensis. In
1974, paleoanthropologists found an almost
complete skeleton of one specimen of this
species and named it Lucy, from The Beatles
song <Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.= The
whole world found out about Lucy and she was
in every newspaper: she became a global
celebrity. This small female4only about 1.1 m
tall4lived 3.2 million years ago. Analysis of her
femurs (thigh bones) showed that she used
terrestrial locomotion. Lucy could have used arboreal and bipedal locomotion as well, as
foot bones of another A. afarensis individual had a curve similar to that found in the feet
of modern humans.

**Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis

Homo - is the genus (group of species) that includes modern humans, like us, and our
most closely related extinct ancestors. Organisms that belong to the same species
produce viable offspring.

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Louis Leakey - a famous paleoanthropologist who discovered Homo habilis in 1964.

Homo Habilis (Handy Man) - was the most ancient

species of Homo ever found. Homo habilis appeared
in Tanzania (East Africa) over 2.8 million years ago,
and 1.5 million years ago became extinct. They were
estimated to be about 1.40 meter tall and were
terrestrial. They were different
from Australopithecus because of the form of the
skull. The shape was not piriform (pear-shaped), but
spheroid (round), like the head of a modern
human. Homo habilis made stone tools, a sign of
creativity.

Eugene Dubois - a paleoanthropologist who

discovered the first fossil of Homo erectus (meaning
upright man), which appeared 1.8 million years ago.

Homo Erectus (Upright Man) - appeared in East

Africa and migrated to Asia, where they carved
refined tools from stone. Fossil of Homo erectus
received several names. The best known
are Pithecanthropus (ape-man)
and Sinanthropus (Chinese-man).

Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) - they were

known as the European branch originating from two
lineages that diverged around 400,000 years ago,
with the second branch (lineage) Homo
sapiens known as the African branch.

Neanderthals used many of the natural resources in

their environment: animals, plants,
and minerals. Homo
neanderthalensis hunted terrestrial
and marine (ocean) animals, requiring
a variety of weapons. Tens of
thousands of stone tools from
Neanderthal sites are exhibited in
many museums.

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**A comparison of the skulls of Homo sapiens (Human) (left) vs. Homo
neanderthalensis (Neanderthal) (right).

Homo sapiens

Fossils recently discovered in Morocco (North Africa)

have added to the intense debate on the spread of H.
sapiens after they originated 315,000 years ago. The
location of these fossils could mean that Homo
sapiens had visited the whole of Africa. They arrived
about 45,000 years ago into Europe where the
Neanderthals were already present.

Several thousand years ago H. sapiens already made

art, like for example the wall painting in the Chauvet
cave (36,000 years ago) and the Lascaux cave (19,000
years ago), both in France. The quality of the paintings
shows great artistic ability and intellectual
development. Homo sapiens continued to prospect the
Earth. They crossed the Bering Land Bridge,
connecting Siberia and Alaska and moved south 12,500 years ago, to what is now
called Chile. Homo sapiens gradually colonized our entire planet.

In much earlier times, there was a theory that there were several races of humans,
based mostly on skin color, but this theory was not supported by science. Current
studies of DNA show that more than seven billion people who live on earth today are
not of different races. There is only one human species on earth today, named Homo
sapiens.

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**The Neolithic Revolution

- It is also called the Agricultural Revolution, marked the transition in

human history from small, nomadic bands of hunter -gatherers to
larger, agricultural settlements and early civilization.
- The Neolithic Revolution started around 10,000 B.C. in the Fertile
Crescent, a boomerang-shaped region of the Middle East where
humans first took up farming. Shortly after, Stone Age humans in
other parts of the world also began to practice agriculture.
Civilizations and cities grew out of the innovations of the N eolithic
Revolution.

Neolithic Age

- The Neolithic Age is sometimes called the New Stone Age. Neolithic
humans used stone tools like their earlier Stone Age ancestors, who
eked out a marginal existence in small bands of hunter-
gatherers during the last Ice Age.
- Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe coined the term <Neolithic
Revolution= in 1935 to describe the radical and important period of
change in which humans began cultivating plants, breeding animals
for food and forming permanent settlements. The advent of agriculture
separated Neolithic people from their Paleolithic a ncestors.

Causes of The Neolithic Revolution

There was no single factor that led humans to begin farming roughly 12,000
years ago. The causes of the Neolithic Revolution may have varied from region
to region.

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- The Earth entered a warming trend around 14,00 0 years ago at the
end of the last Ice Age. Some scientists theorize that climate changes
drove the Agricultural Revolution.
- In the Fertile Crescent, bounded on the west by the Mediterranean
Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf, wild wheat and barley began
to grow as it got warmer. Pre-Neolithic people called Natufians
started building permanent houses in the region.
- Other scientists suggest that intellectual advances in the human brain
may have caused people to settle down. Religious artifacts and
artistic imagery 4 progenitors of human civilization 4 have been
uncovered at the earliest Neolithic settlements.
- The Neolithic Era began when some groups of humans gave up the
nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle completely to begin farming. It may
have taken humans hundreds or even thousands of years to transition
fully from a lifestyle of subsisting on wild plants to keeping small
gardens and later tending large crop fields.

Neolithic Humans
- The archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey is one of the
best-preserved Neolithic settlements. Studying Çatalhöyük has given
researchers a better understanding of the transition from a nomadic
life of hunting and gathering to an agriculture lifestyle.
- Some of the earliest evidence of farming comes from the
archaeological site of Tell Abu Hureyra, a small village located along
the Euphrates River in modern Syria. The village was inhabited from
roughly 11,500 to 7,000 B.C.

Agricultural Inventions

1. Plant domestication
- Cereals such as emmer wheat,
einkorn wheat and barley were
among the first crops domesticated
by Neolithic farming communities in
the Fertile Crescent. These early
farmers also domesticated lentils,
chickpeas, peas and flax.
*Domestication - is the process by
which farmers select for desirable traits
by breeding successive generations of a
plant or animal.

2. Livestock
- The first livestock were domesticated from animals that Neolithic
humans hunted for meat. Domestic pigs were bred from wild boars,
for instance, while goats came from the Persian ibex.
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- The first farm animals also included sheep and cattle. These
originated in Mesopotamia between 10,000 and 13,000 years ago.
Water buffalo and yak were domesticated shortly after
in China, India and Tibet.

Effects of the Neolithic Revolution

- The Neolithic Revolution led to masses of people establishing

permanent settlements supported by farming and agriculture.
- It paved the way for the innovations of the ensuing Bronze
Age and Iron Age, when advancements in creating tools for farming,
wars and art swept the world and brought civilizations together
through trade and conquest.

**Early Civilizations
Civilization - is a complex society that creates agricultural surpluses, allowing for
specialized labor, social hierarchy, and the establishment of cities.
The first civilizations appeared in major river valleys, where floodplains contained rich
soil and the rivers provided irrigation for crops and a means of transportation.
Foundational civilizations - developed urbanization and complexity without outside
influence and without building on a pre-existing civilization, though they did not all
develop simultaneously.

The earliest civilizations developed between 4000 and 3000 BCE, when the rise
of agriculture and trade allowed people to have surplus food and economic stability.
Many people no longer had to practice farming, allowing a diverse array of professions
and interests to flourish in a relatively confined area.
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Civilizations first appeared in Mesopotamia (what is now Iraq) and later in Egypt.
Civilizations thrived in the Indus Valley by about 2500 BCE, in China by about 1500
BCE and in Central America (what is now Mexico) by about 1200 BCE. Civilizations
ultimately developed on every continent except Antarctica.

What do civilizations have in common?

1. Cities were at the center of all early civilizations. People from surrounding
areas came to cities to live, work, and trade. This meant that large
populations of individuals who did not know each other lived and
interacted with one another.
2. State - is an organized community that lives under a single political
structure. The political structures that states provided were an important
factor in the rise of civilizations because they made it possible to mobilize
large amounts of resources and labor and also tied larger communities
together by connecting them under a common political system.
3. Early civilizations were often unified by religion4a system of beliefs and
behaviors that deal with the meaning of existence. As more and more
people shared the same set of beliefs and practices, people who did not
know each other could find common ground and build mutual trust and
respect.

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4. Monumental Architecture - this type of architecture was often created for

political reasons, religious purposes, or for the public good. The pyramids
of Egypt, for example, were monuments to deceased rulers. The ziggurats
of Mesopotamia and the pyramids of early American societies were
platforms for temples.

The word Mesopotamia means <Land Between Two Rivers= (the Tigris and
Euphrates), where several city-states formed in what is now Iraq and Iran. Home to the
Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, the region was a vast and fertile flood plain
that encouraged agriculture and domestication of animals and helped to establish self-
supporting societies. The cultivation of grasses having seeds that could be ground into
flour led to a renewable4and tradable4food source that improved the health of the
collective. Similarly, ancient Egyptian society developed as a result of the rich soil of the
Nile flood plain. Regional cultures competed, fought, cooperated in trade, and evolved
independent artistic styles.

Characteristics of Civilization

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All civilizations have certain characteristics. These include: (1) large population
centers; (2) monumental architecture and unique art styles; (3) shared communication
strategies; (4) systems for administering territories; (5) a complex division of labor; and
(6) the division of people into social and economic classes.

1. Urban Areas
Large population centers, or urban areas, allow civilizations to develop, although people
who live outside these urban centers are still part of that region’s civilization. Rural
residents of civilizations may include farmers, fishers, and traders, who regularly sell
their goods and services to urban residents.

2. Monuments
All civilizations work to preserve their legacy by building large monuments and
structures

3. Shared Communication
Shared communication may include spoken language; alphabets; numeric systems;
signs, ideas, and symbols; and illustration and representation. Shared communication
allows the infrastructure necessary for technology, trade, cultural exchange,
and government to be developed and shared throughout the civilization.

4. Infrastructure and Administration

All civilizations rely on government administration4bureaucracy. The word <civilization=
itself comes from the Latin word civis, meaning "citizen." Latin was the language
of ancient Rome, whose territory stretched from the Mediterranean basin all the way to
parts of Great Britain in the north and the Black Sea to the east.

5. Division of Labor
Civilizations are marked by complex divisions of labor. This means that different people
perform specialized tasks.

6. Class Structure
The last element that is key to the development of civilizations is the division of people
into classes. This is a complex idea that can be broken down into two parts: income and
type of work performed. Changing classes has traditionally been difficult and happens
over generations.

Development of Civilization

Civilizations expand through trade, conflict, and exploration. Usually, all three elements
must be present for a civilization to grow and remain stable for a long period of time.

1. Trade
2. Conflict
3. Exploration and Innovation
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Fall of Civilizations

Many civilizations have flourished and then failed or fallen apart. There are many
reasons for this, but many historians point to three patterns in the fall of civilizations:
internal change, external pressure, and environmental collapse. The fall of civilizations
is never the result of a single event or pattern.

1. Internal Change
Population dynamics are the most pervasive forces of internal change to a civilization. A
sudden population shift or a shift in demographics may force a civilization’s
infrastructure to break down.

Populations may grow, due to migration or a period of unusual health. Populations may
shrink, due to disease, extreme weather, or other environmental factors.

Finally, populations may redefine themselves. As civilizations grow, cities may grow
larger and become more culturally distinct from rural, agricultural areas. Large empires
may extend across such large regions that languages, cultures, and customs
may dilute the identity of the empire’s residents.

2. External Pressure
The clearest example of external pressure on a civilization is foreign invasion or
sustained warfare. Protecting a civilization’s borders can be extremely expensive and
demand a strong military at the expense of developing or maintaining other aspects of a
civilization.

External pressure can lead to the relatively abrupt end of a civilization (and, often, the
adoption of another). The fall of the Aztec Empire with the arrival of
European conquistadores is such an example.

External pressures can also lead to the gradual diminishing of a civilization. The <fall= of
what we often think of as Ancient Egypt is a good example of how external pressures
can redefine a civilization over hundreds of years. Egypt had faced
longstanding, intermittent conflict on its borders, with competing civilizations such as the
Nubians (to the south), the Assyrians (in the Middle East), and the Libyans (to the west).
Later, Egypt encountered the civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome, and eventually
became part of the Roman Empire.

Ancient Egypt also faced external pressures not directly associated with armed conflict.
The powerful forces of Christianity and Islam influenced the eradication of
both hieroglyphics, the writing system of Ancient Egypt, and its polytheistic religion.

3. Environmental Collapse
Some anthropologists think that both natural disasters and misuse of the environment
contributed to the decline of many civilizations.
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Natural hazards such as drought, floods, and tsunamis, become natural disasters as
they impact civilizations.

Democratization
- Is the transition to a more democratic political regime and it is the process
whereby a country adopts such a regime.
- Democratization takes time because it requires the development of new
institutions and widespread trust in them, which almost never happens
quickly.

Democracy
- A system of government in which all people of a state or polity are involved in
making decisions about its affair, typically by voting to elect representatives to
a parliament or similar assembly.
- To be considered democratic, a country must choose its leaders through fair
and competitive elections, ensure basic civil liberties, and respect the rule of
law.

It became very popular and many countries now have transitioned into a democratic
political system because of four causes:
1. Wealth or Money
2. Social Equity
3. Culture
4. Foreign Interventions

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For further reading, please refer to the links below:

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/global-prehistory-
ap/paleolithic-mesolithic-neolithic-apah/a/the-neolithic-revolution

https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/neolithic-revolution
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldcivilization/chapter/the-neolithic-
revolution/

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/world-history-beginnings/birth-
agriculture-neolithic-revolution/a/introduction-what-is-civilization

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/key-components-civilization/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/democratization

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References:
https://www.thoughtco.com/biological-evolution-
373416#:~:text=Biological%20evolution%20is%20defined%20as,noticeable%20or%20not%20so
%20noticeable.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/biology-and-genetics/biology-
general/biological-evolution

http://creationwiki.org/Biological_evolution

https://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-
evolution#:~:text=In%20biology%2C%20evolution%20is%20the,and%20gradually%20change%2
0over%20time.

https://www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution/Background-and-beginnings-in-the-
Miocene

https://culturalevolutionsociety.org/story/What_is_Cultural_Evolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution

https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/neolithic-revolution

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldcivilization/chapter/the-neolithic-
revolution/

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/world-history-beginnings/birth-
agriculture-neolithic-revolution/a/introduction-what-is-civilization
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/key-components-civilization/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/democratization

https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/democratization

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