Culture and Developmental Plasticity: Evolution of the Social Brain

Abstract

The relation between culture and biology emerged as one of anthropology’s first intellectual responsibilities. It remains one of our most frustrating enigmas. The dichotomy of “nature and nurture ” has been a persistent obstacle to consilience between the biological and social sciences. Anthropology has traditionally recognized that culture is inextricably linked to the evolution of mind and that the converse is equally important. In this chapter, I review a scenario in which the mind evolved as a “social tool ” in an increasingly cultural environment. I posit that the human psyche was designed primarily to contend with social relationships, whereas the physical environment was relatively less important. Most natural selection in regard to brain evolution was a consequence of interactions with conspecifics, not with food and climate. The primary mental chess game was with other intelligent hominid competitors and cooperators, not with fruits, tools, prey, or snow. An extended juvenile period was favored by natural selection because of the need for more time to develop mental competencies used in forming coalitions and other aspects of social competition. “Culture, ” shorthand for the information acquired and used by minds in social ways, was a 73 03-Burgess.qxd 4/29/04 8:59 PM Page 74

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