Reconsidering the Meaning of Culture and its Uniqueness to
Humans
By Inès SAA
Introduction
Have you ever picked up your phone and wondered: how did it come to be? This
question is applicable to any
object or device that makes up our everyday
lives, but too often
it is neglected if not even thought up. In fact, as we grow accustomed to our surroundings, we fail to notice the peculiar.
Culture is one of such peculiar things that blends in our surroundings in
various forms: the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the music we make, the languages we speak, the beliefs we hold, the technologies we rely on, as well as many other daily habits and principles we live by, but it’s
also a much more simple concept
than we might think. Due to its
multifaceted nature, culture has been largely studied through various sciences, most of which focused on culture as a human attribute. For that reason, it has for long been thought that the
origin of culture is man.
However, increasing knowledge on animal
behavior and social learning has proved otherwise. Culture can be thought
of as an evolutionary trait which the first hominids inherited as rudimentary cultural traits and later gained in complexity. So, instead of a purely anthropological approach, it seems that a bioanthropological approach
is better suited to deepen our understanding of human culture (Laland, 2017).
Explaining human culture
through evolutionary biology and animal
behavior ultimately leads to a reassessment of what culture
means and
its uniqueness to man.
Overcoming anthropocentrism
Human uniqueness is often based on cognitive and physiological capacities such as high intelligence, language and morality (National
Academy of Sciences, 2010). Yet, it is known now that a variety of mammals and avians also possess these attributes, which thereby challenges anthropocentrism – the
belief that man is superior to other beings (Rae, 2014) – and builds a solid ground on which animal
culture can be considered.
First, high intelligence is
extensively studied in corvids, and primates as they typically display advanced reasoning and
problem-solving abilities. Primates and humans are known to be closely related
and share a high percentage of genetical similarities, with chimpanzees and bonobos being the closest species
to mankind. But common ancestry
isn’t
the key to high
intelligence since corvids, who are
avians and thus a different class of vertebrates that have diverged from mammals, display cognitive abilities that occasionally surpass those of primates. Most intelligence measuring tests
for corvids focus on memory, awareness of surroundings, predicting another individual’s behavior based on previous knowledge
of their character
(Theory of mind), judgment,
decision making, and planning. Carrion crows and magpies usually pass these tests successfully and show cognitive flexibility and adaptability (Ma, 2015).
Second, spoken language in humans
is characterized by its diversity and complex structuring. The usage of speech rules and
grammar to standardize
a language and facilitate communication doesn’t seem like an
adaptation other animals would need. Yet, cetaceans, a class of mammals including whales and dolphins, hold the potential to have said adaptation. In fact, the humpback whales are one of the few mammals that display highly structured vocal sounds called songs. If people use words to make sentences and sentences to form ideas and speech, then humpback whales have ‘units’,
one clear continuous sound, that can vary in tone and make up ‘phrases’. The repetition of one phrase forms a ‘theme’ and many themes constitute a song. The sequencing of units is non-random, and the singing of themes has a strict order (Dartnell, 2013). Despite the song’s structured nature, for it to be recognized as a language it needs to be recursive and show further evidence of lexical category structure.
Lewis Dartnell has taken on the hypothesis that whale songs might be the first non-human language yet discovered. Through a thorough analysis of various experiments, he concludes that results indicate the existence of grammar in the songs of humpback whales, which supports the idea that the primary
function of the songs is language.
Finally, both animals and humans are moral
subjects, capable of behaving upon moral
motivations (Monsó et al., 2018). Rats are highly perceptive beings that have repeatedly shown
through, ironically, ethically questionable experiments that they are capable
of altruism and
empathy. Empathy designates the capacity to emotionally relate
to another individual’s emotional state and chose to act accordingly. Russel Church’s experiments on the “emotional reactions of rats to the pain of others” in 1959 shows that the rodents will experience
fear and distress at the sight of another rat
being shocked after lowering a lever that habitually provided them with food. As the rodents understands that getting food is now at the expense of a cage
mate getting shocked, the rats deliberately avoided the lever to prevent cage mates from being harmed. This selflessness or rather altruistic and highly
moral behavior in rats suggests they are also able to separate wrong from good. Further experiments have supported the idea that rats don’t act based on personal benefit such as being rewarded food or freedom but are motivated by
the moral duty of rescuing a
fellow cage mate in distress.
As experimenting methods progress, more is learned of animal capacities
and their potential to
have culture.
Animal Culture
When considering animal culture,
different scientist will frame their research based on various criteria such as transmission via social learning or teaching, the passing down of knowledge over multiple generations or traditions, complexity, and variability in behaviors. To
learn from others is both
an efficient and safe way
of accumulating knowledge
required to lead
a sustainable life (Whiten, 2021). Social learning is therefore, to date,
the most global way through which culture happens and is transmitted. That is partly because the passing down of knowledge, in the form of either imitation or teaching, allows for the selection and the
refinement of useful skills. This cumulative property is typical of human
cultures. Although mostly complex, human culture also has simpler socially learned components to it.
Likewise,
orangutans have a variety of socially
learned skills ranging from basic subsistence skills to high
complexity skills all of which constitute cultural knowledge (Schuppli
et al., 2019).
These skills
can
be affected by environmental
changes, leading to cultural
variation. In other words, if ecological
changes happen, a population of orangutans can adapt their foraging and nest
building skills accordingly
by behaving in novel ways. Innovativeness in this case is additional
evidence that culture
is present in animal
lives too.
Furthermore, novel behaviors can sometimes
spread and become traditions. A specific example is that of Imo a Japanese macaque who was once given a sweet potato by researchers and then proceeded to salt the potato in salt water before consuming it. This behavior
spread to other macaques and was continuously performed for five years (1953-1958) until salt washing potatoes became
a tradition within most members of the population, especially those born around the time the tradition emerged (Hirata, 2001). One possible interpretation for the reason behind Imo’s behavior is, quite simply and intuitively, that
potatoes taste better when salted. This reasoning is what lead to gastronomy in human
culture: the idea that a food would taste better if slightly or extensively modified through
combination with other ingredients or foods. The possibility that Imo didn’t intend to salt the
potato but simply to wash itis thinkable. However, that just means the novel behavior of ‘salting’ was initially triggered by the common knowledge of ‘washing’ the potato, which is a sort of cultural
knowledge on its own.
Culture and Evolutionary Biology
The driving force of progress and change in biology
is evolution. Slow changes over long periods of time are what allowed for the refinement and accumulation of emergent properties as organisms gained
in complexity. The theory
of evolution has explained multiple biological features and phenomena; however, it can also explain human culture. As a matter of fact, “cultural evolution is deeply
intertwined with biological
evolution”
as
stated by Borg
et
al., 2024. Having evolved a brain is the reason why a set of animals, including the first hominids, were able to think and perform other
cognitive tasks which inevitably led to culture
making. From there onward, culture evolved
alongside cognition. This would imply that animal and human cultures are part of a continuum that started with rudimentary cephalization and dispersed nervous system in flatworms and then evolved, through
speciation events, into centralized nervous systems baring cognitively flexible
and highly adaptative brain organs.
As culture is demonstrated to be shared between man and animal, new theories aiming to prove human uniqueness are formed. There is notably Morgan Llyod’s theory of Open-Endedness which states that both man and animal may display cumulative cultures, but only humans have an “open-ended” culture (Borg et al., 2024). This theory
refers, in a way, to people’s capacity to project themselves into the future. An open-ended culture
is therefore met with continuously producing novel
behaviors and has little
limitations.
Conclusion
Culture in essence is the transfer of accumulated
knowledge through social
learning. It concerns both animals and humans. Through the study of evolutionary biology and specifically human cognition evolution, it becomes clear that cultural traits developed
along with cognitive tasks such as memory, socializing, communication, etc.
The bioanthropological approach therefore succeeds in showing the continuum between man and
animal, thereby disproving anthropocentrism and narrowing
the possibilities for
scientist to find what really makes humans unique as attempted
by the Open-Endedness Theory.
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