What was Charles Darwin’s most significant contribution to evolutionary biology? So our evolved biological framework enables us to create cultural artifacts. We had to have hands to make sophisticated tools.īut in order to articulate them we need to have brains, which are capable of controlling that mode to function. You need a biological framework on which to build the culture itself.

Culture is based on our biological framework, influencing it as evolution progresses. In evolutionary time, culture and biology feed off each other. How do biological and cultural evolution relate? There are almost no examples of that activity in non-human animals, with the exceptions perhaps of dolphins or crows. We also pass culture on to people who we are not related to, like we are doing in this interview. Yes, because we are cultural accumulators. But abstract art, statues, musical instruments and so forth emerged 40,000 years ago. The earliest example can be seen in a species called Kenyanthropus platyops, about 3 million years ago. We began using tools before we were Homo sapiens. It’s all the extra architecture of our lives. It includes art, writing and music, but also things like stone tools and pottery. His latest book is the “The Book of Humans: the Story of How We Became Us” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), which explores what sets humans apart in the animal kingdom.įrom a scientist’s perspective, how would you define culture? This article is a preview from the Winter 2018 edition of New HumanistĪdam Rutherford is a geneticist, author and broadcaster. 'An extraordinary adventure.Adam Rutherford. 'Magisterial, informative and delightful' Peter Frankopan 'A thoroughly entertaining history of Homo sapiens and its DNA in a manner that displays popular science writing at its best' Observer From Neanderthals to murder, from redheads to race, dead kings to plague, evolution to epigenetics, this is a demystifying and illuminating new portrait of who we are and how we came to be. In this captivating journey through the expanding landscape of genetics, Adam Rutherford reveals what our genes now tell us about human history, and what history can now tell us about our genes. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes we each carry the history of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration and a lot of sex. It is unique to you, as it is to each of the 100 billion modern humans who have ever drawn breath. It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. 'A brilliant, authoritative, surprising, captivating introduction to human genetics. A dazzling tour of the latest genetic discoveries which are blurring the boundaries between science and history - 'Brilliant, authoritative, surprising, captivating' BRIAN COX

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