Cultural evolution generally proceeds without any conscious planning, just as genetic evolution does, but nothing restricts a culture from evolving in a rationally determined direction. The fact that the most change you humans have made in recent times has been cultural, rather than through genome - shifting, means that, apart from the shrinking-brain thing, you are not yet physically restricted from successfully existing once more in smaller tribes in sustainable ways. The Bottom Line: Human genomes have changed little in the last 50k years, so humans have attained recent changes through cultural evolution.
Enter: The Amoeba
Reg Morrison in front of termite mound, Australia
Summary: We ’ ve mentioned the words superorganism and amoeba, and here we will formally introduce them.
Imagine that the 7.7 billion humans alive today all led solitary lives like tigers or orangutans. We ’ d be like billions of pinballs bouncing around the natural world (and each other), with no purpose other than as solitary individuals seeking out food, shelter and mates and to be left alone. If you find it hard to imagine, it is because this situation could never happen with
126
Powered by FlippingBook