Culture

Culture refers to the socially transmitted bases for behaviour that characterise the human species.

The cultures are the sum of total of ways of life that are cultivated by people in particular social frame works, providing a sense of social coherence and yet changing through time.

Culture includes language, art, also includes intangible aspects as values, norms, ideas, beliefs and symbols. Culture frameworks are transmitted by a verity of socio-political institutions and through the process of socialization and enculturation.

Edward Tylor. 1871 gave culture the following definition: “ that complex whole which including knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capacities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

Culture is open-ended, doesn’t have boundary and is socially transmitted.

The big Culture is the property of all humans, of human species, Homo sapiens. Without socially transmitted knowledge, individuals can not be part of society.

Evolutionists believe that human species share the certain common Culture as the result of evolutionary process, as it was seen in hominid evolution. For biological (evolutionary) reasons this means that all human populations much have come under the same strong selective pressure. To have remained a single species we have retained 99.9% genetic makeup in common, i.e. blueprint.

Culture is shared by all human beings regardless of all their other environmental differences. It is suggested that culture as the main reason for our continued existence as single species as the strong selective pressure.

That implies that despite of the differences in the content of local cultures, all cultures must be making essentially the same demands on us as human, i.e. it takes he same kind of brain and body to live by any of the world’s cultural traditions; All human must be predisposed genetically to require a cultural input if they are to act like human beings. Culture is therefore part of very biological constitutions. Therefore, though we experience the different kinds of cultural input for our daily living, we are all under Cultural influence as a human.

(I have to reinstate that those “so-called” scientific findings are yet to be proven)

Some evolutionists believe that human species were evolved from hominid line, the first major adaptation was the development of a distinctive foot- this indicates a regular shift to upright position when walking, along with associated changes o shape of he pelvic girdle, to which the legs were attached. Bipedalism (walking uprightly) enables hominid to be ground dwellers and to see longer distance. This also enhanced tool-using and tool-manufacturing, and ability to carry hunted food etc. This also led to a narrowing of the birth canal through pelvic girdle, at the same time, the size of brain was increasing through increasing requirement of inter-subjectivity- double guessing the mental life of others and manipulation of the world through tools.

These factors made childbirth more difficult and baby remains vulnerable and requires mother’s care.

As hominid evolution proceeded, the brain size increases, skull size increases too, that further makes childbirth difficult. The adaptive response for this was for the baby to born at earlier stage of development, so that its size would still allow it to be born. That means baby was born into a helpless state and dependent on others for the first few year of life.

The baby’s further development requires external programming i.e. Culture provided by people around him. That means that baby requires access to cultural input before it could organise its own actions. The neuronal connections that develop as the brain matures thus depend crucially on the child response to this cultural input.

Thus, biologically we are cultural creatures. It is however not specific cultural content that we are responding to so much as the necessity that cultural places on each one of us to choose and to construct our own behaviour. Although specific cultures differ in their content, they all make much the same demands on individual human beings. So evolution has shape by this demand, human beings therefore have remained a single species.