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selfish GeneMemetic Evolution

We humans are mammals, and, as an animal species, are subject to the same laws of evolution.  Most of us are aware of the genetic evolutionary process.  This was described by Richard Dawkins in his book the Selfish Gene.  He identified genes as the agents of evolution, because they are replicators. Replicators can be copied reasonably faithfully; they confer an evolutionary benefit to a life-form and occasionally mutate. All life-forms from the humblest bacteria to the largest blue whale are involved in a Darwinian process of survival of the fittest. They are all just survival vehicles for their genes.  So are we, we will all die but our genes can survive indefinitely.

However, there is a second evolutionary process at work in addition to genetic evolution. Some call it cultural evolution, but I prefer the term memetic evolution. Memes are simply ideas copied between two animals that allow them to demonstrate common behaviours and skills. By watching and learning from others, animals pass memes on from generation to generation. Just like genes these memes can mutate and confer an evolutionary advantage.  It is evolution by nurture rather than by nature.

Memetic evolution is a parallel process to genetic evolution. Just like genes, memes are replicators: they can be copied reasonably faithfully; they can mutate and they confer an evolutionary advantage to the community that shares them. Memetic evolution is the result of communities competing and cooperating with each other. Those communities with the most effective combination of memes will thrive. The unique memes of failed communities will die out.

Many mammal species live in communities and have evolved their own unique culture by passing on memes. The reason that memetic evolution is so dynamic in humans is that we, uniquely, can transmit memes by speech as well as by demonstration. This has allowed humans to build a vast pool of skills, technologies, knowledge and concepts that have transformed the way we live.

Human evolution started with bands of hunter-gatherers; violent competition between communities drove memetic change. Bands of hunter-gatherers fought each other for access to hunting grounds. Those bands with the best combination of memes won their battles and as a result gained access to better hunting grounds, grew in population, split into new bands and spread their memes. Defeated bands were forced out to marginal lands, where they either developed new technologies and skills appropriate to their new environment or died out.

InuitBy the power of this violent evolutionary process, human hunter-gatherers developed the skills and technologies to survive in most of Earth’s environments. , Thus in the icy North the ancestors of the Inuit invented  kayaks and harpoons. In rainforests, Amazonian Indians developed the skills to use blow-pipes and dugout canoes.

amazonianBy 10,000 years ago Homo sapiens had become the most successful predator on the planet.  We had become the first animal species to exist on all 5 continents and had wiped out several large mammal species.

The story of human memetic evolution is the story of human history. In Memes, Society and Human Evolution, I explain how memetic development transformed our role on the planet. It is a story of increasingly effective technologies and the development of progressively specialised types of communities, all underpinned by ever more sophisticated organisational structures within an increasingly wider range of community interactions. Although genetically formed as hunter-gatherers, humans are now farmers or, increasingly, city dwellers, making and trading in goods and services. Most of us live 3 times longer than our distant ancestors and have immensely richer and more rewarding lives.

memetic evolution