Evolution in Cultural
Anthropology
Introduction
• “Cultural evolution” is the idea that human cultural change––that is, changes in socially
transmitted beliefs, knowledge, customs, skills, attitudes, languages, and so on––can be
described as a Darwinian evolutionary process that is similar in key respects (but not
identical) to biological/genetic evolution.
• Human cultural traits—behaviors, ideas, and technologies that can be learned from other
individuals—can exhibit complex patterns of transmission and evolution.
• Furthermore, cultural and genetic evolution can interact with one another and influence both
transmission and selection. This interaction requires theoretical treatments of gene–culture
coevolution and dual inheritance, in addition to purely cultural evolution.
• In addition, cultural evolutionary theory is a natural component of studies in demography,
human ecology, and many other disciplines.
Introduction
[Daniel C. Dennett:] Cultures evolve. In one sense,
this is a truism; in other senses, it asserts one or
another controversial, speculative, unconfirmed
theory of culture. Consider a cultural inventory of
some culture at some time--say 1900AD. It should
include all the languages, practices, ceremonies,
edifices, methods, tools, myths, music, art, and so
forth, that compose that culture. Over time, that
inventory changes. Today, a hundred years later, some
items will have disappeared, some multiplied, some
merged, some changed, and many new elements will
appear for the first time. A verbatim record of this
changing inventory through history would not be
science; it would be a data base.
Importance
• The study of cultural evolution is important beyond
its academic value. Cultural evolution is a
fundamentally interdisciplinary field, bridging gaps
between academic disciplines and facilitating
connections between disparate approaches.
Cultural Evolution Theory
Unilinear Theory
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) developed the theory of unilineal
evolutionism. The fundamental idea behind this theory is that every culture has
to develop through the same process of evolution, because humans are
fundamentally the same.
“Since mankind were one in origin, their career has been essentially one, running
in different but uniform channels upon all continents, and very similarly in all the
tribes and nations of mankind down to the same status of advancement. It
follows that the history and experience of the American Indian tribes represent,
more or less nearly, the history and experience of our own remote ancestors
when in corresponding conditions.”
• This passage is from Morgan’s masterwork Ancient Society (1877), in which he
also described seven stages of cultural evolution: lower, middle, and upper
savagery; lower, middle, and upper barbarism; and civilization. He supported
his ideas by citing contemporary societies characteristic of each stage except
lower savagery, of which there were no extant examples.
Criticism
• The most basic criticism of this theory is that it's incredibly subjective.
Morgan’s work was very widely read and became the basis for further developments
in anthropology, perhaps most notably its emphasis on cross-cultural comparison and
its preoccupation with the mechanisms of change.
However, although it is considered important in the history of anthropology,
Morgan’s work, and indeed unilineal cultural evolution as a whole, no longer
hold credence in the field.
Multilinear Theory
• A theory of cultural evolution that sees each human culture
evolving in its own way by adaptation to diverse
environments: different ‘pathways’ of evolutionary
development followed by different societies. Sometimes
divided into four broad stages of evolving social
organization: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state‐organized
society.
• Theories and descriptions of hypothetical stages of
evolution generally, and of unilinear evolution specifically,
were heavily criticized as racist; instead of presuming that
some peoples were more evolved than others, the new
trend was to regard all cultures as unique in time and
place. In the United States this movement, known
as cultural particularism, was led by the German-born
anthropologist Franz Boas.
• By mid-century, however, a number of American anthropologists had revived theoretical
discussions regarding cultural change over time.
• They rejected universal stages outright, instead conceptualizing cultural evolution as
“multilinear”—that is, as a process consisting of a number of forward paths of different styles and
lengths. They posited that while no specific evolutionary changes are experienced by all cultures
universally, human societies do generally evolve or progress.
• They further suggested that the primary mechanism for such progress involved technological
breakthroughs that make societies more adaptable to and dominant over the
environment; technology, in this case, was quite broadly conceived, and included such
developments as improvements in tool forms or materials (as with the transition through the
Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages and later the Industrial Revolution), transportation (as from
pedestrian to equestrian to motorized forms), and food production (as from hunting and
gathering to agriculture).
• Proponents of multilinear evolution hold that only in this sense can the whole of world culture be
viewed as the product of a unitary process.