Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 46

One of the most common questions asked of anthropologists is whether the human species is still evolving. Have we reached a pinnacle? Will we become giant-brained, fragile-bodied space-dwellers, using only a single finger to press buttons in the far future?

The simple answer is that yes, we’re still evolving; if we have offspring (replicate), if those offspring aren’t clones (variation), and if not all of our offspring survive to sexual maturity (selection), then by definition, the human species is evolving. But it’s natural to ask whether we’re still evolving because — in developed countries at least — humanity has used medicine and other means to eliminate a lot of the pressures that once took so many of our children. With so many selective pressures defeated (at least in the short term), you may easily conclude that significant genetic evolution has stalled in developed countries in the last century or so. Well, this is somewhat the case, although we continue to change genetically over time. But there is another way that we’re evolving, and its evolution is very rapid.

This other “channel” of our evolution is human culture, and this process is just as important as human genetic evolution. Human culture can change very rapidly, and the changes affect millions. Whereas we’ve had about the same size and shape of skull for 100,000 years, imagine the differences between the United States (say, in clothing and musical styles, concepts of race and religion, and the ethnic diversity of the population) in 1950 and the United States in 2020 — some pretty major changes occurred in the late 1960s (for example, the success of the civil rights movement), and in the past two decades we have had huge transformations in how we access information and interact socially. Whether the changes are good or bad is another matter; for the moment, the important idea is that yes, humanity is still evolving in a very significant way, sometimes very quickly.

This difference may seem trivial, but it’s actually very important. For example, consider the following cultural behaviors and their possible involvement with biological evolution of our species:

 The earliest use of stone tools corresponds with increased consumption of animal tissues (for example, meat and organs). More animal tissue in the diet was only available by the use of stone tools, which were complex enough that young hominins would have to be taught a lot about them; that is the use of an increasingly complex culture to survive.

 The use of clothing (itself a cultural artifact) allows human bodies to survive in environments they wouldn’t normally survive in. For example, the human body is naturally best-suited for equatorial environments, not the Arctic, but the invention of heavy coats and other such clothing enables that body to survive Arctic temperatures.

Paleoanthropologists are deeply concerned with understanding how cultural, noncultural, and biocultural evolutionary factors shaped humanity through time.

Considering that analyzing and understanding a single fossil skull can take years (in addition to what may have been an extensive search and excavation), it’s no surprise that paleoanthropology requires a lot of patience. The fossil hunters can seem a little whacky when they announce new discoveries … but you should perhaps give them a little slack. It’s a slow business… .