Our species has come to dominate Earth’s ecosystems. This state has been termed the Anthropocene, and it creates a novel evolutionary condition for both the biosphere and our species. Research that does connect human evolution to anthropogenic environmental impacts highlights two key factors: the role of culture and the importance of group structure and cooperation
The evolutionary transition in inheritance and individuality (ETII) hypothesis posits that long-term human evolution is driven by a shift in the primary mechanism of evolutionary inheritance from genes to culture, caused by the greater adaptive power of cultural evolution in
Humans.
A new paper1 explores the implications of this hypothesis and proposes a research agenda to develop the novel theory necessary for the unprecedented challenges of our time: The Anthropocene.
We propose that the global environmental crises of the Anthropocene are the outcome of a ratcheting process in long-term human evolution which has favoured groups of increased size and greater environmental exploitation. To explore this hypothesis, we review the changes in the human ecological niche. Evidence indicates the growth of the human niche has been facilitated by group-level cultural traits for environmental control. Following this logic, sustaining the biosphere under intense human use will probably require global cultural traits, including legal and technical systems. We investigate the conditions for the evolution of global cultural traits. We estimate that our species does not exhibit adequate population structure to evolve these traits. Our analysis suggests that characteristic patterns of human group-level cultural evolution created the Anthropocene and will work against global collective solutions to the environmental challenges it poses. We illustrate the implications of this theory with alternative evolutionary paths for humanity. We conclude that our species must alter longstanding patterns of cultural evolution to avoid environmental disaster and escalating between-group competition. We propose an applied research and policy programme with the goal of avoiding these outcomes.
The paper is written by Timothy M. Waring, Zachary T. Wood and Eörs Szathmáry, and it is part of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B special issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’. Eörs is the co-author with John Maynard Smith of The Major Transitions in Evolution, a seminal and inspiring work on evolutionary biology.
Here is an X-Twitter thread by Timothy explaining key details in the paper.
And here is my own less-than-280c take (and the main reason for this post). Our species does not exhibit the adequate population structure for the challenge.
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(1) Waring, Timothy M., Zachary T. Wood, and Eörs Szathmáry. ‘Characteristic Processes of Human Evolution Caused the Anthropocene and May Obstruct Its Global Solutions’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 379, no. 1893 (13 November 2023): 20220259. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0259.
Featured Image: Philosophical Transactions B, Volume 379 Issue 1893 Special Issue Cover image: People gathering to see the artwork ‘Floating Earth’
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