What is Culture?

Our history is written in our genes and in our actions. We can do little about the former, but virtually every­thing about the latter, if we are a free people.Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza (1995: xi)

PRELIMINARY REMARKS
The emergence of Homo culturalis onto the evolutionary scene can be traced originally to the development within the human spe­cies of an extremely large brain, averaging 1400 cc/85.4 cu. in., more than 2 million years ago.
Humankind's ability and disposition to think and plan consciously, to transmit learned skills to subsequent generations knowingly, to establish social relationships in response to need, and to modify the environment creatively are the felicitous con­sequences of that momentous evolutionary event. The brain's great size, complexity, and slow rate of maturation, with connections among its nerve cells being added through the pre-pubescent years of life, has made it possible for Homo culturalis, in effect, to step outside the slow forces of biological evolution and to meet new environmental demands by means of conscious rapid adjustments, rather than by force of ge­netic adaptation: i.e. it has bestowed upon the human species the abil­ity to survive through intelligent activities in a wide range of habitats and in extreme environmental conditions without further species dif­ferentiation. However, in balance, the prolonged juvenile stage of brain and skull development in relation to the time required to reach sexual maturity has exposed neonatal human beings to unparalleled risks among primates. Each new infant is born with relatively few innate traits yet with a vast number of potential behaviors, and therefore must be reared in a cultural setting so that it can achieve its biological poten­tial. In a phrase, Culture has taken over from Nature in guaranteeing [lie survival of the human species and in charting its future evolution.

Evidence from the field of paleontology, the science of fossil interpre­tation, suggests that cultures have ancient origins. The fashioning of tools, the earmark of early cultures, was accomplished at least 2.5 mil­lion years ago, as was the use of gesture for communication. Gradually, planned hunting, fire-making, the weaving of cloth, and the ritualized burial of the dead became well-established characteristics of hominid groups. By about 100,000 years ago, the making of art, communication by means of language, and communally-established systems of ethics became the distinctive attributes of the first human tribes. Since then culture, in the sense of individuals living together, thinking and plan­ning consciously, transmitting skills and systems of social relationships to each other through language, and working together to modify the environment, has become the defining attribute of the human species.

So, the question of what is culture is hardly a trivial one. To under­stand human nature is to unravel the raison d'etre of culture. Although interest in culture is as old as human history, the first scientific defini­tion of culture had to await the nineteenth century, when the British anthropologist Edward B. Tylor defined it in his 1871 book Primitive Culture as "a complex whole including knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capability or habit acquired by human be­ings as members of society." Tylor's definition was also one of the first ever to differentiate qualitatively between culture and society. Although these terms continue to be used commonly as synonyms in many lan­guages, in actual fact they refer to different things. Within a social col­lectivity, there can, and frequently does, exist more than one culture. In an opposite manner, several societies can be thought of as belonging to the same general culture—e.g. European culture, Asian culture, African culture, etc. Societies are simultaneously the geographical and histori­cal "reifications" (manifestations) of cultures: i.e. they have existence in time and space, enfolding the signifying processes that shape and regu­late the lives of the people who live within them.

Like other species, Homo culturalis has always lived in groups for protection and refuge, thus enhancing its survivability. But, as Tylor's definition implies, human societies involve much more than instinctive group behavior. The primary purpose of this text is, as a matter of fact, to highlight those aspects of human gregarious life that transcend the survival functions of other animal groupings.

The amount and diversity of scientific research that has been con­ducted on cultural systems since the publication of Tylor's book in 1871 have reached mind-boggling proportions. And yet, the reason culture came about in the first place remains largely an enigma to this day, even though various intriguing hypotheses about its origins and raison d'etre have been formulated on the basis of a veritable stockpile of pale-ontological and archeological information. In this opening chapter, we will start our excursion into culture with a panoramic survey of those hypotheses. Needless to say, we cannot possibly go into any depth or detail here. In one chapter, all we can really do is scratch the surface of the historical record. We will therefore be selective, highlighting those ideas that we consider to be relevant to the focus of this text, even if this entails leaving out many others whose influence on the develop­ment of culture theory is hardly negligible. After a brief historical foray, we will move on to a succinct consideration of some rudimen­tary matters, casting a glance at what is most prominent in discussions about the origins of culture with an eye towards putting forth a work­ing semiotic definition of this phenomenon that reflects the paleon-tological record. Finally, we will describe the principal spheres —kinship, religious, political, legal, economic, and educational—that constitute the institutional systems that have emerged to regulate social interaction in the human species.

As the reader may have surmised by now, we have coined the term Homo culturalis simply as a stylistic device. There is no evidence to sug­gest the existence of a species identifiable as Homo culturalis, separable or differentiable in evolutionary lineage from the other species of Homo. The term is a rhetorical figure, meant to highlight the fact that in the evolutionary heritage of human beings, culture stands out as a truly remarkable attainment.

Source: Analyzing cultures: an introduction and handbook / Marcel Danesi and Paul Perron. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1999.