Cultural Evolution :: essays research papers

Cultural evolution began to occur during the most recent Ice Age, or within the last hundred or fifty thousand years. This is when the tools that's are used for sophisticated hunting are found; for example the spear thrower, the fully barbed harpoon, and the flint master tools that were used to make all the hunting tools. Cultural evolution took shape because man had the flexibility of mind to recognize inventions and to turn them into community property. The Ice Ages forced man to depend less on plants and more on animals, also the ice changed the strategy in which man hunted. Instead of stalking single animals, the better alternative was to follow herds and not to lose them, to learn to anticipate and in the end to adopt their habits, including their wandering migrations. This adaption is known as the transhumanance mode of life on the move. It adapts the earliest forms of hunting, because it is pursuit, where the animals go and how fast they go there set the pace of life and the geography which where they lived. Also it has the later qualities of herding, because the animal is tended and stored as a mobile reservoir of food. This change from a vegetarian to an omnivorous diet, gave man more free time to spend in more direct ways. Meat is a more concentrated protein than plant, and eating meat cuts down the bulk and the time spent in eating by two thirds. Man would become totally dependent on the animal that he hunted, not only for food but products that could be made using the animals remains. Hides could be used for clothing or shelter and bones and antlers could be made into tools or utensils. Hunting could not support a growing population in one place so the hunters made the choice to either move with the herds or starve. Inventions of tools played a major role in cultural evolution, inventions may have been rare but they spread fast through a culture. Early inventions not only helped man survive but they helped him in becoming a civilized species that had order and control of his lifestyle. Once an invention was discovered, man never left it at that, instead he studied the invention or tool and learned how to make it better or easier to use. The Magdalenian hunter of southern Europe fifteen thousand years ago invented the harpoon.