Richard J. Severson

Biology alone cannot explain human evolution.  The complex interactions between culture and biology are primordial.  By “culture” I mean the intentional, or consciously invented, practices of large groups of humans, and by “biology” I mean the natural givenness of who and what we are regardless of our own intentions or inventiveness.   

Language is a good example of how both biology and culture working together contribute to human evolution.  There is no doubt that we invented language, yet the use of it changed human anatomy, including tongue dexterity, facial musculature, larynx and vocal cords, breathing and hearing patterns, even brain structures.  Normally, we think of our anatomy as biologically determined, not beholden to cultural practices. 

 To this day, the Great Ape species from whom we evolved control their voices from subcortical limbic regions of the brain, which is why they can only produce a few dozen distinct sounds.  The human voice, on the other hand, maps to a newly expanded area of the cerebral cortex.  We take the complex mental planning necessary to coordinate rapid speech movements entirely for granted because it is a subconscious routine for us.  It wasn’t always that way, of course.  Imagine the conscious effort that went into learning how to speak fluently; it must have been a painfully slow process. 

Not only did our speech mechanisms develop and expand with the invention/acquisition of language, so did our auditory system.  We have the ability to perceive words and phrases as discreet objects rather than random sounds.  We also have an internal articulatory loop that enables us to rehearse what we are about to say to make sure it sounds right.  Sound is crucial to memory.  It is hard to memorize similar sounding words, for instance.  In order to remember things, we repeat them to ourselves over and over.  Articulation is a mnemonic device.  It’s probably an extension of the repetitive ritual behaviors that shaped the mimetic memory of erectus, our hominid forebears.  Semantic (linguistic) memory internalizes ritual behavior in that sense. 

Words are symbols that were invented for the purpose of putting the world into order.  Aphasic neurology patients can’t think well because they have no words to do it with; their mental world has been stripped of its lexical tools.  Narrative is the natural form of our mental worlds, and myth is the highest form of narrative.  Essentially, myths impose an interpretation—a framework for understanding—upon the entire world.  Myths are the product of generations of story swapping conversations regarding the meaning of life and death.  When one group conquers another, they impose their myths upon them.  The natural instinct is to resist such an imposition; to lose one’s myth is a loss of identity, a collapse of the world.  Myth sat at the top of the cognitive pyramid in every Stone Age society.  Shamans were its regulators; also, I suspect, its creators.  The mythic mind is a world modeling device, and myths were our first symbolic models.  Much like history, all myths reconstruct the past, establishing the original order of creation and what it means to be in the world.   

Like biology, many cultural traditions—attending religious services, for instance, or pledging allegiance to the flag—play a conserving function in human evolution.  They serve as a buffer against change that is too easily consummated, slowing down the potentially dangerous/disruptive nature of evolution.  But just like the anatomy of the human voice, they slowly change over time as new practices emerge and find their utility in the human experiment. 

One final observation: The human experiment, the dance between culture and biology (also, long-standing traditions and new ways of thinking), is not finished yet.  We are evolving, and what is unique about us as a species is that we are active participants in our own evolution.