Why have some peoples societies evolved much quicker than others?

Question

as an example, (even if we look to hundereds of years ago) the aboriginal tribes of australia don't seem to have passed a kind of hunter gatherer stage, yet other peoples have weapons and a different kind of agriculture and ruling system etc etc.

Is there a simple answer to this?

Answer 1

Most scientists think it is genetic.

Answer 2

It's a fair point. Aborigines were in Australia more than 50,000 years, and never got past the stone age. Some parts of Oz are quite pleasant and hospitable, so the 'harsh environment' holding them back doesn't really apply.

I'm going to make myself desperately unpopular by saying... intelligence. The Aboriginal course into OZ followed the coast, the same shoreline environment all the way from Africa, around India, down south East Asia into Australia. No innovation required, no significantly different climate to adapt to.

The expansion into Europe and Asia required people to adapt to many different enviroments. They had figure out clothing and strong shelter, and how to hunt strange beasts and figure out which plants won't poison you. They also had to adapt to different seasons and learn to store food in winter. The smarter ones would have been the ones to first successfully colonise new environments. This would have been repeated with each new environment, always favouring the fastest to adapt, the more intelligent. There's not been much gene flow into Australia, so any useful new mutations might not have made it into such a relatively isolated area.

The current native Americans have been in South America something like 10k years, and in that short span of time built huge cities, and developed writing, agriculture, metalwork. They also had tropical heat and diseases to cope with. They appear to have more or less wiped out the previous human inhabitants of the US, who were Australoid and Ainu (the European Solutreans who made it to America appear to have been absorbed into the current native populations).

The natural selection version of the smartest being most succesful in unfamiliar environments is probably why there's a difference. To believe otherwise you'd have to assume that evolution suddenly came to a dead stop the day Mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam were born.

Answer 3

hunter gatherer societies often have adults only working around 4 hours a day, and they spend the rest of their time socializing with their children neighbors and family....you tell me, which is the more "Evolved" society?

Answer 4

I will give you the simple answer That J_Maverick lost in her verbosity.

Evolution is organic and has nothing to do with societal progression. Evolution has no direction, as it is simple mutation and response to local environment.

Answer 5

Just as human evolution is often wrongly discussed on terms of selection that should be making humans taller, stronger, faster, you are talking about evolution in dated terms.  Biological evolution doesn't select for our ideals but rather for what is best suited for an environment.  It is no longer believed that peoples progress through hunter/gatherer, pastoral/agricultural, etc up to societies like the modern West.  This was once a theory in anthropology - one of the first to award equality of humanity to all societies.  Now, like the mechanism of biological evolution, natural selection, cultural evolution proceeds to help humans adapt to their environments as well.  Environments can only handle so many people.  Living in the Outback, on the African savanna, in the Sahara, in dense rain forests place certain restrictions on societies which until very recent technological invention, could not be overcome.  Even now, technologies may not be well and efficiently applied in all places.  Cultures are also somewhat resistant to change.  Until a society can adapt a technology to their culture, it is often not adopted at all.  People are all reluctant to trust the unknown and are very attached to their own world view.  People, especially leaders, choose what technologies are acceptable and what are dangerous (think about the Beachy Amish who can use computers and the Internet but not watch TV, consider the debates in the US about abortion, stem cell research, or nuclear power).  Japan was must faster to perceive a changed environment at the start of the Meiji era than Europeans were to adopt the Scientific Method.  Cultural evolution isn't about selecting for the Western ideal just like biological evolution isn't about selecting for the tallest, fastest, strongest people.  Both are based on becoming better suited to the local environment.

Answer 6

READ GUNS GERMS STEEL BY JARED DIAMOND... his hypothesis places emphasis on our originating location. geography and resources allow cultural evolution to occur quicker. it is a long book, so you could just research him and get the just of his hypothesis but it is a good one!

Answer 7

A few years ago on Discovery Channel, a demograher who culminated a 30-year study, concluded that Non-Hunter/Gatherers (farmers), who lived in the temperature zones (30-40 degrees latitude), had the greatest opportunity for producing a successful civilization...

It was based on many factors, but ultimately having a reliable food source from farming, and the ability to domesticate animals, and being far enough from the overheated Equator, contributed to being the optimum formula for advancement, on all levels...

Answer 8

Question for you:  Is there a 'need' to evolve (as you put it) 'beyond' a stage...?

If a society doesn't need to, then 'Why' should it spend the resources perhaps going up not only a blind alley, but one that it needs not even enter  ~   !

Sash.

Answer 9

Based on the other answers "evolved" is subjective. But if you're talking about money and power it's because in the cold climates having that was the best way to survive. Traits and culture got passed down.

Answer 10

That is cultural evolution. It's an outdated theory that puts the biological theories of evolution on human culture. It's simply incorrect to assume that hunter and gatherer people have not and do not evolve. They do and as do their cultures. The recent foraging cultures are not like the foraging cultures of the paleolithic period.

It would be wise to look into the wider context of human culture and evolution. Those who claim differences in culture has to do with biology are simply naive (ignorant) or out right racists (and trolls).

Answer 11

Money.

Answer 12

intelligence, mentality, and psychology

Answer 13

I think that farming civilizations had a head start by settling down not like the hunter-gatherers