Our ability to learn and communicate ideas is essential to our growing power on earth

Mark Pagel is the head of the Laboratory of Evolution, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Reading. He traveled the world studying the evolution and spread of cultures. It is also the author of Wired for Culture: The natural history of human cooperation

, who argues that human culture has passed on the genes that determine we are and how we live.

You argue that culture has some sort of mind control over us?

Some people think that culture is a virus that infects our minds and controls us so that we serve, but to serve, I do think we have domesticated to serve us quite exquisite. In fact, we have evolved to embrace our cultures and allow a degree of mind control over us, in return for prosperity and protection they give back.

How culture to be so important?

200,000 years ago, the defining event in modern human evolution occurred when man acquired the ability to culture. It was the ability to learn from others and transmit knowledge, wisdom and skills. It was a new kind of evolution - the idea we could call evolution. The ideas were able to jump from mind to mind, and that meant our culture could be adapted much more rapidly than genes might be adapted.

When humans left Africa and in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, which is not necessary to wait arise genes that confer an adaptive advantage to live in the desert, things how humans could find shelter, digging for water, camels and so tame. Our ability to adapt to the cultural level should not be considered different from our ability to adapt at the genetic level.

Both are information flows that are transmitted from generation to generation, is one allowed us to receive hundreds or thousands of years instead of hundreds of thousands of years

you say that culture is the most effective way to get more people?

No other species has experienced population growth in the long run. Most animals are raised in the capacity of its environment and then hit it if you are a gnu, you can not climb trees for fruit. They are limited by the environments of their genes are suitable. But we were able to move around the world because we have been able to adapt to a cultural level of many different environments on earth. Now, most species must adapt to us, instead of adapting to the environment. We changed the environment worldwide.

You and I probably would not be here if our ancestors had not been hungry wild. But now we see that this is not a sustainable strategy. So, our species faces his biggest dilemma to date and does not respond well. So far, we can classify all the efforts, as Kyoto, as a dismal failure. No wonder, but we must see that our cooperative nature gives us a glimmer of hope. What we're going to have to do is create a world where everyone is in the same boat. Until we all start behaving in a way that recognizes that all our fates are linked, there is little hope.

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