Is natural selection responsable for the similarities of the development of very different cultures?

Question

thank you

Answer 1

The correct term would be " Habitat "

Answer 2

Not exactly.

There are certain ideas which have certain "right" answers.

Consider for instance, a very constrained human activity, where there is high skill required, and there are only a few ways to properly perform it.

Consider heart surgery, and if two techniques were developed totally independently, they would still share certain characteristics.

Writing is another example, in human history , based on the archaeological record, writing appears to have independently developed no less than 3 and no more than 5 times in human history.

Those writing styles have very little in common with one another the three primaries are Mesoamerican, Chinese/Asian and Indo-European.

There are some influences from each other upon each of them  - but these influences are after the initial development.

So Greco-Roman writing stems largely from the writing of the Babylonian and Sumerian civilizations.

Asian kanji and glyph writing stem from the early iconographic proto-chinese civilization.

Meso-American writing is totally independent but shares the iconographic roots of proto-chinese but is highly stylized and also incorporates a meta (historically referenced) language into the iconography - so you need to know Mayan history before you can be able to read Mayan text, which is why we still only have partial understanding of their languages.

Regarding other types of inventions, it's difficult to say, since travel across eurasia - while difficult was not apparently un-heard of, so it's entirely possible that prehistoric China at at least occasional knowledge inputs of Western Europe and the reverse is also true.

One of the best books on the subject is "Guns,Germs and Steel", by Dr. Jarred Diamond.

Answer 3

Yes, and over time we even begin to look slightly different!

Answer 4

Natural selection, by strict definition, operates at the level of species (i..e. breeding population). It does not account for intra-species behavioral variation (e.g. "culture").

The answer is simply no - with no qualification. Selection is sometimes applied to culture by anthropologists but doing so reduces anthropology to a loose metaphor based on Darwinian ideas - with a lot of pseudoscientific jargon and rule-bending to support it - none of which can be accepted by contemporary evolutionary thinking.

Answer 5

No

Natural selection is about organisms. Those that adapt better to their enviorment tend to survive to pass on their characteristics to their off spring.  Cultures are too recent and too short lived to result from the evolutionary process

Answer 6

A very louse interpretation of the term "natural selection."

But kind of yeah.  One culture lives on the ocean and learns to build ships.  One lives in the plains and developes a more complex interpersonal cultural layering.  One near plentiful resources and one forced to migrate.