Culture

The 19^th century anthropologist (or ethnologist as he would be called in Europe) Edward Burnett Tylor described the concept of culture as follows:

In the 1930s, Ruth Benedict found that the ways in which the Pueblo Indians thought and reasoned were strikingly different from the ways in which their immediate neighbours thought and reasoned, although their geographical environment was identical. It appears that each culture over the ages had evolved and given to its members a unique “mind set” or orientation toward "reality" and that this set actually determined how the members saw and acted "in their world".

Anthropologists are not alone in facing difficulties in addressing issues of ultimately "subjective" nature. The same problem is encountered in ethics, linguistics, psychology, sociology, economy, history, biology... Virtually any science that involves life has exactly the same "problem" - how to deal with "subjective" phenomena in an "objective" manner. This, coupled with inability of so called "hard" sciences like physics, to even start contemplating the complexities of the phenomenon we call life, should give us a pause.

Did we miss something important - indeed very important, by insisting on "objectivity"?

The concept of evolution was for the first time spelled out in 1840 - almost twenty years before Charles Darwin published his celebrated "Origin of Species" (1859). This concept provided a starting point for anthropology as a science. However, more than 160 years later, anthropology seems to be still at the margins and many anthropologists admit that a “science” of culture seems possible only if (cultural) anthropologists could free themselves of ethnocentrism and produce concepts and other elements that are universal, "objective", and theoretically significant. Its aim - to enable cross-cultural comparability - makes things even more problematic. I would suggest that these efforts are considered in the light of the fact that "objectivity" is nothing more than commonly agreed "subjectivity". Just like in language, the meaning of any symbol within it is a product of meanings of ultimately all other symbols within the system and as such, it could be fully grasped only by a "subjective" speaker of the language.

Field investigations of many cultures (practically living within a culture) led many anthropologists to speak about culture in terms of a living organism in constant adaptation to its environment (evolution) that also includes other cultures. Exchange of "cultural traits" (diffusion) between cultures seems possible only if a "cultural trait" can be fully incorporated within a culture; anything else seems to be superficial and in the domain of civilisation (see below).

Even hints of a language (like those noticed in apes and other species) lead to emergence (birth) of a culture - i.e. transition of an accumulated knowledge from one generation to another by other means than genetic makeup - and the stage for another kind of evolution is set. Each new individual, born and grown into a culture, receives (by means of language) a "cultural imprint" that forms his "description of the world and himself within it". Although constantly reinforced by other members, the "cultural imprint" is also continuously tested and altered by the thoughts of each individual member and the newly acquired knowledge is shared with others. Direct experience, although desirable, is not necessary as long a full understanding is reached. The "cultural imprint" also brings in memories and stories of others before us and leaves to our imagination the world after us - and this gives raise to our notion of time. The nomadic nature of early cultures could have also contributed to our notion of space.

The "Out of Africa" theory suggests that the first cultures of homo sapiens evolved for at least 70,000 years before starting to migrate around 50,000 years ago. National Geographic article "When did 'Modern' Behaviour Emerge in Humans?", presents the current debate among archaeologists and anthropologists that also raised a question of "what" made cultures to move and spread all over our planet.

I would suggest that an emergent culture needs time to evolve a sophisticated "social imprint" for a culture to flourish. Migrations and trade on a small scale within Africa probably provided sufficiently changed environments for further development of the language and the culture. The final "push" was probably provided by inventions of the fishing and of the boat and I would suggest that first migrations on the large scales might have started in boats along the coast of Africa.

Note, however, that Neanderthals also migrated - what was their "push"?

Culture obviously lives longer than an individual member and although it may die, it is much more likely that it survives and evolves. How old our cultures might be is hard even to contemplate. Some would say hundreds of thousands of years - and this would mean hundreds of thousands of years of continuous evolution - constant testing, altering and refining of "our description of the world and ourselves within it" and means it is transmitted with - our language and our music.

At certain points in history, the survival of cultures of a region might have been threatened by rapid changes in our planet's climate (end of ice age estimated around 10,000 years ago). A tighter cooperation between various cultures became an imperative and early civilisations were born. (No cities yet - but probably large meeting and trading areas with some structures likely to be a representation of a culture that may have later evolved into what we call temple.) It is important to notice the difference between the culture and the civilisation. While within the culture the full understanding between its members is an imperative, this is not required between members of civilisation that belong to different cultures within it. (I would suggest that the turning point was when a culture started to allow for parts of other cultures to be incorporated.)

This situation required planning, record keeping, diplomacy... The invention of early writing quickly followed. I would also suggest that this is the period when the first notions about how members of other cultures see "me" - in other words looking at myself from the "outside" - emerged and the door for emergence of the phenomenon we call consciousness was open.

By the time of early civilisations, cultures were evolving and accumulating knowledge for more than 100,000 years. The combined effort of cultures within a civilisation brought astonishing results like this one described in the National Geographic article "Was Maya Pyramid Designed to Chirp Like a Bird?" It seems that Steven J. Waller got it right by relating acoustics to cave paintings.

Early civilisations were probably not very stable since they were dependent on voluntary participation of variety of cultures. However, they did bring variety of cultures together and the obvious benefits to all were a strong unifying factor that in time have been incorporated within each of the cultures. Similarities in languages used in various cultures might not have been initially important, but as civilisations flourished - the emergence of the single, shared language was a matter of time only. This unifying force of the civilisation is also reflected in early polytheism gradually edging towards monotheism.

Once established, civilisations were growing as the improved organisation, centralised planning and record keeping enabled establishment of control over greater distances (ancient Greek civilisation, if we can speak of a single civilisation in this case, with its city-states seems to be a different case). This growth went gradually and probably with little if any force until two or more civilisations met. The fact that in a civilisation we have a large number of different cultures cooperating without fully understanding each other, some levels of force in maintaining the civilisation have already been established and probably considered necessary for the further growth. The Roman empire flourished on the basis of the strength of its military power, innovations, politics and centralised administration until the sheer weight of record keeping and increased senseless violence made ruling practically impossible. Political differences led to a variety of rearrangements between cultures and internal infighting split it first into the Eastern and Western Roman Empire and later into even smaller units.

The invading cultures with their own ways of cooperating (emerging civilisations) had probably more vigour than those that lived for centuries under Roman rule and the whole structure simply collapsed leaving us with almost half a millennia on the fringes of the civilised world (the Ottoman empire meanwhile grew on the remains of the Eastern part).

Out of the ashes of the old Western empire, new civilisations were born. Initially, the shrunken horizon often did not go further than the next village, monastery or the castle of the local ruler. Only the privileged few (mostly merchants, clergy, nobility, their soldiers and servants) would hold some knowledge unfathomable to ordinary people. (No wonder that many consider this a "dark age" and a few think that the phenomenon we call consciousness practically disappeared in this period.) With the renaissance, larger political structures emerged and the horizon was pushed further away. The new civilisations-states and later nations emerged inspired by the richness of the almost forgotten Roman Empire. Latin was still the lingua franca (thanks to the church) and the broaden horizon demanded social changes (rearrangements between cooperating cultures). The discovery of the new world also shifted the centre towards western European countries like Spain, Portugal, Dutch and England that also had established a large number of maritime cultures. The concept of a "maritime civilisation" emerged and English gradually gained an upper hand. Colonies under British rule could keep some of their customs and laws enabling thus a "smoother" cooperation between radically different cultures. It also enabled a transfer of knowledge between cultures and the understanding grew - unfortunately at one place only - at the centre of the empire.

Engineering and science flourished bringing in new knowledge and inventions that led towards industrial revolution and further changes in society (democratisation, literacy) that have not stopped even now. However, the rapid pace of technology and science (that was partially followed by art but not by humanistic sciences), especially in the last 20^th century, shrunk the world bringing face to face all our civilisations and their cultures. I would suggest that nowadays, practically all cultures of our planet feel threatened facing "alien" ideas and concepts. There is not much difference in the threat some Christian cultures experience when faced with the concept of evolution, from the threat some South American tribes experience when faced with deforestation.

It seems to me that we are witnessing emergence of a meta-civilisation - an entirely new concept on the planetary scale. However, our own cultures appear not to be ready. An idealist or a person in power might think that these are just minor hurdles. I would caution against such a lightly approach - for each culture survives on a coherent "description of the world and ourselves within it". If this is not respected, our Western civilisation(s) will collapse just like Roman Empire did - and with it a number of other contemporary civilisations may fall. I would also suggest that current levels of international cooperation are not at satisfactory levels nor are our own understanding of ourselves and our cultures. We need to re-establish equity between our cultures as well as between our nations and civilisations.

I would suggest that our planet is still big enough for all of our cultures to cooperate and live in peace next to each other. This of course involves a degree of trust and understanding of each other on many levels and I hope that these web pages of mine will contribute their little bit to this. But this also means that old concepts that our civilisations (nations) and cultures were based upon need to be changed.