The General Theory of Capital: Self-Reproduction of Humans Through Increasing Meanings - страница 2

transition to upright walking, which began about 7 million years ago. Compared to chimpanzees, it saved 25 percent of energy, freeing the hands for tool-use, mouth and teeth for a more complex system of sound signals, i.e. proto-language. These changes demanded a larger brain with energy requirements three times higher than the brain of a chimpanzee (Smil 2017, pp. 22-3). Of course, upright walking itself demands an explanation that cannot be reduced to an unlikely accident. However, as Joseph Henrich notes, the precise evolutionary sequence in which meanings arose—gestures, vocal speech, social norms, tool-use—is not crucial, since cultural evolution created significant genetic pressure in all directions. If the freeing of the hands led to the development of language, then the evolution of tongue freed the hands for using tools, preparing food, and maintaining balance when chasing prey (cf. Henrich 2016, p. 252).

Culture as an accumulation of meanings begins when an animal species goes beyond the limits of natural selection or mere adaptation to the environment and begins to adapt the environment to its needs, that is, it forms its own niche in the environment. The formation of a niche means, first, that the animal’s organs and their functions go beyond the animal’s body: part of the environment becomes a “continuation” of the organism. An ape, for example, takes a stick to “extend” its arm and pull termites—its favorite food—out of a termite mound. Second, the organism gradually changes due to its own niche-altering actions: for example, an increase in brain size in humans with the development of meaningful actions. The evolution of meanings is the evolution of indirect, roundabout, instrumental and symbolic behavior aimed at building a niche within nature, a domus for humans.

Henrich notes that cultural evolution initially faced a start-up problem: it had to provide both a bigger brain and more meanings. A small brain cannot retain too many meanings, and a bigger brain is not needed if there is nothing to learn. So, how could we jump-start the cumulative engine of cultural evolution? To make a leap over a chasm that can only be crossed in two leaps, you need a “bridge.”

“Once cumulative cultural evolution is up and running, it can create a rich cultural world, full of adaptive tools, techniques, and know-how that can more than pay the costs of building and programming up a larger brain designed and equipped for cultural learning. However, in the beginning, there won’t be much out there to culturally acquire, and what is there will be simple enough that it will still be learnable by one’s own individual learning efforts (without social learning), by trial and error for example. Thus, natural selection may not favor larger brain size or complexity, because brains are costly to develop and program” (Henrich 2016, p. 297).

According to Henrich’s hypothesis, the “bridge” problem was solved by two intertwined pathways (Henrich 2016, pp. 298 ff.). First, by multiplying meanings without notably increasing the size of the brain: in open areas with many predators large hominid groups formed for collective defense and exchange of meanings. Second, by reducing the costs of creating and maintaining larger brains. Henrich believes that female hominids, in order to avoid inbreeding, left their group upon reaching sexual maturity and moved to the neighbors, losing all family ties. The formation of stable protofamilial pairs in large groups, in which the child’s kinship could be established not only through the maternal, but also through the paternal side, made it possible to form a circle of relatives of the mother by marriage, that is, the child’s relatives (alloparents). This spread the burden of child-rearing among a larger number of individuals, thereby extending both the time in which the child could acquire a culture and the size of his brain.