Genes and Culture

This article caught my eye today, likely because I just finished a book on genetic detective work. It would appear that using genetics to map movements of prehistoric people will likely become more common, and certainly overturn more long held ideas. As Sykes points out in the Seven Daughters of Eve, the long held belief that early farmers spread across Europe and displaced the indigenous population is wrong from the genetic evidence: Only 17% of current Europeans can trace their mitochondrial DNA to those early farmers in the fertile crescent. Instead, as the farmers spread, their ideas spread even faster through cultural transmission, and everyone became farmers.

I would predict that we will see more of this as previous archeology that traced people movements based upon pottery and other artifacts will also be displaced by new genetic information that the ideas for the designs and tools spread faster than the actual people (except, of course, to regions where there were no people inhabiting.)

I also predict that we will see a vocalization of bigotry and racial prejudice as genetic evidence uncovers more of the inter-connected web of humanity, and breaks down concepts like race and (racially driven) superiority. Those who want to hold onto the conceit that they are descended exclusively from some superior ancestor will resist the new information, perhaps even speak out against this new science, attempting to block it in some way.

Humanity just hasn't been around long enough to develop sufficient genetic changes to actually make groups genetically different. And superior just doesn't even make sense when talking about genetics. As Richard Dawkins so aptly points out in “The Ancestor's Tale”, one cannot say that any species is more evolved than any other: All current non-extinct species have had just as much time to evolve, indeed, are all evolved to the same extent that 4 billion years of evolution can give them. Each is fit for its niche. It is human arrogance that projects a design and a hierarchy onto the species of the planet. It is plain conceit that places humanity at the culmination of all evolution.

And so the attacks on this that I anticipate are unfortunate. For as we come to understand more about how we came to be dispersed upon the world and how similar we are, the more we will recognize the power of culture to spread ideas and shape thinking. This should give us more reason to discard our old myths about innate superiority, with all their attendant injustice, and work towards more reasonable culture-wide and world-wide solutions to the various problems we face.