Humanity Is Evolving Into One Large Ant Colony

Here’s what you’ll be taught if you learn this story:

• The trajectory of life on Earth has at all times been predicated by genetic evolution, however two scientists from the University of Maine argue that tradition is now the principle power shaping our lives.
• A brand new research analyzes this phenomenon and makes an attempt to quantify the evolutionary transition coming with it.
• Although a gene-culture coevolution framework may be extremely adaptable, the authors’ earlier work argues that its basis in useful resource extraction and sub-global teams may make fixing issues like local weather change notably difficult.

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For the billions of years that life has been on Earth, genetic evolution has been within the driver’s seat, slowly however steadily honing species as they face varied environmental pressures. And then, roughly 600,000 years in the past (by some estimates), a very big-brained member of the Great Ape household started displaying proof of cumulative tradition, as evidenced by increasingly complex stone tools. Those early technological steps blossomed into full, complicated societies which have taken over from genetics as the important thing driver of evolution, in accordance with a brand new paper by Timothy Waring and Zachary Wood on the University of Maine.

Published within the journal Bioscience, the 2 scientists analyzed the differential between how adaptable genetics and tradition may be whereas additionally figuring out patterns in gene-culture coevolution. This research builds on years of labor analyzing the phenomenon and coming to phrases with what such an evolutionary transition may imply for the way forward for humanity and the planet.

“Human evolution seems to be changing gears,” Waring said in a press statement. “When we learn useful skills, institutions or technologies from each other, we are inheriting adaptive cultural practices. On reviewing the evidence, we find that culture solves problems much more rapidly than genetic evolution. This suggests our species is in the middle of a great evolutionary transition.”

At first look, the thought is a comparatively easy one. Environmental challenges that will’ve doomed people up to now may be remedied by technological advances enabled by cultural evolution. The authors use the instance of eyeglasses or corrective surgical procedure for imaginative and prescient issues, in addition to medical breakthroughs reminiscent of caesarian sections and fertility therapies. These examples (amongst many, many others), the authors argue, improve our reliance on cultural methods like hospitals, colleges, and governments and reduce our reliance on genetic adaptation.

This transforms people from a person organism right into a collective one—not not like how particular person ants kind a colony to realize one thing past the person.

“In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms,” Waring said in a press statement back in 2021. “Take the coronavirus pandemic, for example. An effective national epidemic response program is truly a national immune system, and we can therefore learn directly from how immune systems work to improve our COVID response.”

While it’s not arduous to see the advantages of gene-culture coevolution, this reliance on societal tradition to handle issues may also have stark downsides if these societies are reliant on self-destructive practices. In January of 2024, Waring and Wood printed one other paper detailing how human tradition was constructed on extracting assets, and reversing that development will probably be robust.

“This means global challenges like climate change are much harder to solve than previously considered,” Waring said in a 2024 press statement. “The bigger problem is that central features in human evolution are likely working against our ability to solve them. To solve global collective challenges we have to swim upstream.”

The hope is that understanding these co-evolutionary mechanisms could help create positive change that fosters global action beyond regulatory frameworks like the Paris Climate Agreement.

“If cultural inheritance continues to dominate, our fates as individuals, and the future of our species, may increasingly hinge on the strength and adaptability of our societies,” Waring stated in a press assertion in regards to the newest paper. “And if so, the next stage of human evolution may not be written in DNA, but in the shared stories, systems, and institutions we create together.”