Saturday, November 21, 2015

Cultural Evolution

Are we, or are we not evolving?


Something I always think about is how well I would do in school if not for the internet and the advancement of technology. It was not until 1974 that the first personal computer was born, and even then it had no keyboard or screen. It was not until 1977 that a computer anything like the one we know today was used. Say I was born in the forties like my grandmother and had to lug around 6 different books for college classes instead of an ipad full of ebooks. Even my mother had to rely on an encyclopedia to acquire information.
Today we have a vast amount of information under our fingertips, in our pockets, or on our desktop at any given time during the day. This leads me to a question I have asked and that I think have answered. Our humans done evolving?

In my cultural and linguistic anthropology class we discussed the topic of evolution shortly, only to lay the foundation of the class. But an interesting idea stuck with me; that being the idea of cultural evolution. People, biologically may be done evolving; but our technology has brought us much further than our bodies may be able to sustain. This is not to decline the amazement of the human brain, but to expound on all of the incredible things the human brain was able to accomplish. If it were not for cultural evolution we would not have coats, umbrellas, shoes, and cups. All of these creations were birthed because of the human need for it. In my opinion, we as humans are constantly evolving to fit our needs. We as a species are ever-changing, and adapting our environment and our technology to be more useful to us. In a way the homo sapien sapien species will never stop evolving because it will never stop challenging old ideas and technologies; that concept in itself is truly beautiful to me. 

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