The Long Divergence: Twelve Thousand Years of Friction

How Has Cultural Evolution Changed Biological Evolution?

Humans did not always live herded into highly organized cities and societies, minded by government bureaucrats to keep everyone safe and secure and healthy.

Up until about 12,000 years or so ago, most humans lived in small free ranging groups, surviving by hunting & gathering and by designing and creating the tools they needed to survive.

The very idea that a small group of so called elites would manage an individual’s or group’s personal affairs would have been laughable and summarily dismissed.

Indeed, there is anthropological evidence that Neolithic humans violently fought against this concept and eventually lost and were assimilated.

As the climate warmed after the ice age, farming & herding developed in southern areas, and gradually spread to the colder north, where hunter gatherers predominated.

This scenario has been elegantly documented by groups of anthropologists, including Kristiansen and his colleagues.

While the complicated details of this anthropological and genetic evidence are beyond this essay, the modern science indicating this was true is more than accessible.

It is the overall implications of this science which are most important to those considering the implications of what this basic change in how the human species evolved may indicate.

For this change in life styles was profound and may indicate critical truth about how culture may be even more important in shaping biological evolution than previously appreciated.

While it does not necessarily indicate that humans should return to becoming hunter gatherers, it does point out friction between a free ranging human and one integrated into a hierarchical civilization.