The Prerequisites of Culture - Essay Example

The word culture has Latin in origin, which means, " to cultivate" and refers to the patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures which gives significance to such activities. The term culture refers to a group and society who has similar ways of living and thinking, and exhibit a common set of behaviour. The anthropological concept of culture can be applied equally to all human societies, who have been evolved from nomadic and sedentary societies. The human being have been evolved and have learned through course of time, a complex system of symbolic systems which has been developed independently from the biological evolution. A few examples include the learning a belief, way of doing things, even if they do not share a biological relationship which has led to development of the human "instincts". According to anthropologist, culture is not a product of biological evolution, but it is rather a mean of human adaptation to the world. Culture enables humans to change rapidly to the physical changes in the earth. The cultural phenomena is universal however, cultural adaptations changes from place to place with different set of meanings from place to place and people to people. As the culture has a symbolic system, it meanings also differs from place to place with changing beliefs, myths, rituals, tools making, house design, living and eating habits. A few anthropologists differentiate between symbolic and material culture, however since 1980 majority of archeologists agree, that the symbolic culture and material culture are interwoven and symbolic culture is expressed through material culture. THE PRE-REQUISITES OF CULTURE Culture normally has certain unique characteristics such as: (a) symbols, which is an abstract way of referring to objects, ideas and feelings with the help of language;(b) culture is shared with in a group; (c) culture is not hereditary, but learned, even though people differ biologically, culturally they can have similar habits and behaviour; and (d) Culture is adaptive. People use culture to quickly adjust and adopt to the changes in the world. Culture as a symbol Human being comprehends and communicates in symbols. It is these symbols, which allow people to develop complex ideas and thoughts with other people and language and arts are symbolic in nature, which makes it easier than gestures to express human emotions through symbols. A symbol some times has a relation or may not have any association with an object or idea. For example for Americans, the combination of white, blue and red colour has special meaning, the people in China consider red colour sacred one. In reality such colour may not have any practical purpose, but if these colour are combined in a shape of flag, people are willing to die for it as it stands as a symbol of honour for a nation. In order to convey, new ideas, human being has to constantly create new symbols and add more meanings to their expressions and feelings. Sometimes, one word is used to convey an idea, and some times combination of words are used to convey some deeper meaning. Human beings right from birth are able to construct and comprehend such complex symbols. Language provides a mean to store and communicate such expression, but some times it exceeds the capacity of the non-human animal. For example Chimpanzees, which are the closest genetic relative to human have few unique calls and gestures to communicate with each other. Chimpanzee in the lab experiments have been taught to communicate in sign language and were able to master a vocabulary of few hundred words, however chimpanzees do not have developed vocal tract like human beings. Culture through Learning Human beings are not born with culture, it is rather learned by living in a society. In all human societies children learn culture by imitating adults through the process of enculturation, which takes years to complete. In all human societies, children learn culture from adults and this process is called enculturation, or cultural transmission. However, it is not only humans who have the ability to learn culture. Chimpanzee also have to learn the skill of finding food, make simple tools, which may be simpler than our complex culture, yet it distinguish these animals from other animals and provides an evidence that culture is even learned among animals as well. Not only this, but they are also able to transmit this learned behaviour to their off springs. Similarly chimpanzees are also able to communicate through different vocal sounds and facial expression. Similarly they also exhibit the ability to solve problems and learn language based on pictures or signs. Cultural adaptation Culture adaptations enables human societies to survive in changing circumstances, such as the last Ice Age posed enormous challenge for the humans, but human were able to adapt to the this great change. During the Ice age one major source of food in North America was animal meat, but as the earth warmed up, the animal disappeared and humans have to find alternative. They survived the crisis and later on developed the technologies and inventions, which were more suited to the changing environment. If we look at the dinosaurs, they could not cop with the changing earth temperature, while man made it through cultural adaptations as result, man is today the most successful specie on earth. THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURAL BEHAVIOUR The Bowhead whales can also sing during mating. Similarly mating sounds among birds and other animal also portray some cultural signs and gestures. Similarly different groups of Chimpanzees capture termites, use stick for food and some use wood to crack open the nuts, while other make certain kind of tools to use it in their everyday life. It is these aspects of culture; anthropologists believe that the early human may have gone through learn different cultural habits and traits. Culture has been developed with the evolution of human species and is closely related to biology. The reasons for humans to have culture is due to: the big and complex brain, up right posture, free hands to hold things and objects, and vocal tract, which can articulate various kind of sounds. It is these distinctive human features, which were developed by the ancestors of early human about four million years ago. In the early homo- erectus the cultural behavior may have evolved in the same way as animal by sharing and transferring knowledge among each other and passing to future generation. With the arrival of language would have made things easy for early man and he would become much faster to learn. The growth of human evolution is also the development of human behaviour. The human evolution is not merely change in biological traits and physical appearances, but it is about the development of cultural activities. Human activities are ruled by social customs and traditions, which includes a variety of elements, such as mastering technology and transferring the knowledge to the future generation. The scientists have tracked human evolution from the study of cultural artifacts, such as tools and remain of food, which shows that human evolution has progressed slowly. According to the hunting hypothesis, it is assumed that the homo-erectus hunting techniques may have influenced the social organization behaviour, increasing the tool making competition and intelligence. During the course of time, the human migration allowed the expansion of technology of tool making and hunting techniques to the other parts of world. This increased social behaviour led to diversity in tooling techniques and cultural and environmental adaptation. During the course of human evolution from apes to human, many social changes have occurred, such as prolonged maturation of the infants, greater bonding between male and female (pair- bonding) and the concept of home or safe refuge also evolved. CONCLUSION The chimpanzee behavior is perhaps the relics of early human behaviour, although not an advance stage, yet it depicts, how earliest human may have evolved, and how they used to live in groups, developing language and different cultural traits, which were not only understood inside the group and but were important to keep bonding as at that time, humans were an endangered specie. The Homo Erectus accumulated knowledge by adopting advanced techniques of living and hunting, moving to caves and later on transmitting that knowledge to the next generation. Homo erectus evidently has developed technologies for hunting and learned to use fire and became more capable at obtaining meat and safety. Natural selection increased the human brain size with increase in intelligence, yet it has been the pattern of cultural alteration, which accelerated the growth of modern human being The cultural development of home erectus started a new phase in the history of human evolution. Natural selection perhaps is one of the ways, which has altered the process of human development, but human evolution without any doubt has been consistently altered and reshaped by the "bio-cultural revolution". The adaptation of new habits and habitats in the changing environment allowed the early humans to provide solutions to their ever-changing world, which led to changes in habits and traits. Moving to new environments may have changed the early humans biological setup, but it was mainly adaptation of culture, which has truly affected the course of human evolution. Reference McGrew, W.C (1996). Patterns of Culture Chimpanzee Material Culture. Implications for Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press. 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