Why Do Humans Have Cultures?

To answer this elusive question it is necessary to define the term culture (there is not a static definition),

"Culture means the total body of tradition borne by a society and transmitted from generation to generation. It thus refers to the norms, values, standards by which people act, and it includes the ways distinctive in each society of ordering the world and rendering it intelligible. Culture is...a set of mechanisms for survival, but it provides us also with a definition of reality. It is the matrix into which we are born; it is the anvil upon which our persons and destinies are forged." From this definition it is evident that culture is something learned and shared throughout generations and is also ever-changing. This essay will attempt to explore why humans have cultures as well as the need for it. What must be common in all of us that enable us to be so diverse? Theories will also be explored to grasp the idea of how culture has been embedded in our history.

To begin to answer this question it is necessary to go back to the commencement of human history. “Homo sapiens, the species to which we belong, has existed for about 100,000 years” Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have developed over time. During the late 19th century the established conception of culture was that it evolved in a “uniform and progressive manner.”

Many of the theorists which includes Herbert Spencer and Tylor believed that most cultures/societies pass through the same stages or go up a unilineal ladder until they reach the last stage whereby they are civilized.

Therefore this theory proposes that societies such as hunter and gatherer societies are perceived to be at the bottom of the ladder or at the initial stage of progression, while cultures of the western world are the last and final stage where society is civilized. The Sociocultural evolution theory thus expresses the fact that we humans have culture to arrive at an ultimate goal; to become civilized members of society.

Already it is evident that there are many problems with theories such as these. The initial problem is the fact that it assumes that all societies pass through the same stages when in actuality all societies are different and can skip certain stages of this unilineal ladder of society/Culture. All cultures do change however they do not change in accordance to stages. Furthermore this theory is deeply ethnocentric; it assumes that western cultures are more sophisticated in comparison to tribal culture. Because this theory was categorized as a scientific theory it was often utilized to support certain negative social practices. Theories such as this provide an excuse for racist people to justify their beliefs. An exemplary of this would be of the Nazi’s who believed that they were the elitists while certain races such as the Jews, or Africans were inferiors and justified their inhumane actions because of this.

Eric Wolf’s theory negates theories such as Sociocultural evolution theories because such theories never assume change, they merely state that all societies go through the same set of stages. Wolf focused on the fundamental dynamic of change in cultures, as well as concepts of exploitation and colonialism (he adopted a Marxian viewpoint). Wolf highlighted the fact that the world is constantly going through processes of recreation and reconstruction. Anthropologists have a tendency to describe and interpret societies as static and never changing. However Wolf believed that, “All human societies of which we have record are secondary indeed often tertiary, quaternary or centenary, cultural change or cultural evolution does not operate on isolated societies but always on interconnected systems in which societies are variously linked within wider “social fields.” Wolf states that cultures are interconnected and this is the reason why societies such as that of the Basarwa are not wholly isolated but in contact with their neighboring societies. They have employed many traits from their neighboring societies; hence we can see Wolf’s description of an ever changing world in practice.

This essay has briefly discussed how some theories attempt to explain why humans have culture. But what is common amongst humans overall which enables us to participate in culture?

There are many biological explanations as to what is common to all humans.Humans are the only species that has developed the capacity for complex symbolic communication about the world, as well as the capacity to create tools and institutions based on that complex symbolic understanding. Why? Because we are social animals who possess a special mental function which can distinguish between animate