We often hear of natural selection, founder effect and mutation on animals. These all contribute to their evolution and thus the creation of new species of animal. Throughout the years, evolutionary biologists have studied how today's living creatures have evoloved over time with the help of these theories of evolution. Today, i am going to discuss the application of these theories on the human culture. The cultures that are to be used as examples in this article are mainly from asia.
Firstly, natural selection. It is defined as the process which is most responsible for genetic change, by reducing and changing genetic variation. Although humans are not affected by predation, we are affected by the other selective pressures. These selective pressures are as follows:
1) climatic forces: although we are not very much affected by this, there are lots of human alleles which will be lost if a hurricane or some adverse weather hit the population. For example the recent tsunami which hit the asian regions. There was a very high casualty rate. Thus, imagine the amount of alleles lost!
2) Diesease: many diseases in the world are killer diseases and a cure have not been found for them. If an outbreak of such diseases were to occur, surely, there would be a lot alleles being selected against.
Of course there are many other of such selective pressures which would affect humans. But the rest is up to you to figure it out!
If something is selected for, the whole population would gradually move towards those favoured for and thus, result in a change of alleles in the population.
The second theory is genetic drift. Likewise, genetic drift (which is the random disapperance of alleles) can also be caused by disasters. Therefore, destroying alleles in the population.
The third theory is the founder effect. This is when few organisms move into an area and start a community. This would limit the gene pool in the community.
Last but not least, gene migration. With advances in technology, we are able to move around the world easily. Such is the trend with migrants. There have been a steady increase in the number of migrants moving in and out of the country. Thus, there are new alleles introduced into the population.
How can these theories be used in a cultural aspect? If we look at the number of dialects in the Chinese culture, there are probably more than 100 in the world. Where do all these originate from? We have to look at the patterns of evolution for more infomation. With time, these different cultures have broken off from the main stream and form their own culture. Then, they evolved parallelly with the main chinese culture, thus, creating the different chinese cultures we see today. Also, if we take a close look at the Japanese and Korean cultures. We can also infer that they are once part of the main stream chinese culture. This is because if we look at the korean language, some of the words are the same as either the hokkien or chinese. Thus, we can infer from this that these cultures have all once been part of a "common culture".
But why are they so different now? This is because when they broke off from the mainstream, instead of evolving parallelly, they diverged. This creating a new culture. We also know that when divergent evolution occured, there is an isolation of a population from the main gene pool. If we look at the surnames of these people, there are a large percentage of them having same surnames. Again, we have to infer that these people all once came from the same ancestor and has multiplied through the generations. Therefore, because of this, we can tell that the original culture which broke off from the mainstream is only made up of a few people. Thus, limiting the gene pool of the population. Once again, we can relate this to the founder effect, one of the theories of evolution.
In conclusion, the theory and patterns of evolution can be applied to cultures to a large extent. We should therefore not limit ourselves to just using these "biological" theories on just living creatures but THEIR CULTURES TOO!!!
This is completely and authentically my own work - CHEONG, Weiyang Samuel 120505
