Human Evolution and Cultural Diversity
Track 6
Hominization
Humans and chimps both descend from apes that lived seven million years ago, so we have common ancestors. However, this does not mean that humans descended from apes in the same primate lineage.
Hominization
The process that allowed the human species to evolve from its predecessor to Homo sapiens sapiens. It is a lengthy process in time, beginning with the appearance of primates.
Anatomical Changes
The source of human suffering begins with simian changes in the body. An ergida posture allows movement on hind legs, the brain grows, and the hand shortens. These changes were significant, leading to important developments in our species.
Bipedalism
Climate change in the late Miocene led Homo to the forest plains of the savanna. The light was insufficient for arboreal locomotion, forcing them to move with their hind legs. Bipedal posture was the first change, leading to others as important as the release of the hands. This position involved the development of the vertebral column and allowed the winding of the brain, thus encephalization.
Encephalization
The brain volume increased, creating more neurological connections. This growth and tool manufacturing were driven by the complexity of social life and diet. Eating meat provided more energy, allowing the brain to increase in size. Parallel jaws reduced due to a gene mutation.
Hand Shortening
The proportion of the hand and fingers shortened. However, the thumb extended, making instrument manipulation easier.
Physiological Changes
The release of the hands enabled hominids to make tools. Without tools, hominids would be unprotected as their bodies became less crude. The brain became more capable of counterbalancing this vulnerable anatomy, leading to success.
Release of Hands
This was a direct consequence of the new bipedal posture. Hands were free, no longer needed for locomotion. A larger brain enabled better labor. Fingers acquired a wide range of motion for future maintenance.
Biological Plasticity
The human creature has the longest dependency period, making cultural learning vital for survival.
Reproduction Particularities
Humans have no mating season; reproductive success is active throughout the year.
Social Changes
Life in society: The lifestyle of Homo became increasingly social. The change from forest to plain may have pushed African cooperation to obtain and manipulate food. Collective operations required organization and sharing of occupations within the group, necessitating a means of communication: language.
Intensification of Social Life
Cooperation among group members was needed for better organization, strategies, tool manufacturing, and cooking. Homo’s long maternal dependence due to their maturation process enhanced their learning ability.
Language
As a result of social life, language became an essential form of communication. This development was crucial for increasing brain capacity. There is a relationship between brain maturation and language ability.
Currently, language is almost effortless. We have a brain programmed to automatically learn and speak the language heard in childhood.
Many indicate that the major interaction of Homo is the key factor of hominization, as there is a steady increase in intelligence that enabled the development and emergence of language. This is also the way to humanization, not just having human form but also showing human behavior.
Humanization
This is the process that leads us to Homo, anthropomorphic or human-shaped men. In humans, the distinguishing feature is not anatomical shape but intellectual capacity.
The process of humanization focuses on changes undergone through therapy. This is no longer instinctive and imitative but focuses on learning and information transmission. The result is a culture that provides greater adaptability and response to any circumstance, with less dependence on a specific ecological context.
Factors
To complete the process from hominization to humanization, several decisive factors contributed to creating a cultural basis. Culture is part of human nature, defining and differentiating our species. It is transmitted through a key factor: language. Others include:
- Discovery of fire
- Manufacture of tools
- Agriculture and livestock
- Social organization
Thought
All factors point to the need for humanization of an increasing ability to perform complex mathematical operations and thought. Thinking interprets information reaching the brain through reason and imagination, enabling affective life. Temporality is a human trait, allowing us to understand the past and project future plans. These features separate us from other animals.
Language
One of the features characterizing humans, unlike other animals, is articulated language. The joint venture to sign-nonsense man can compose meaningful words and phrases. Human language is symbolic, using conventional signs.
A word is a sign language, replacing the named thing. It is a conventional sign because it is arbitrary. The convention that we all accept between word and symbol unites the community and separates them from those who use different languages. This association develops symbolic capacity, allowing abstract thought. Without this capability, there would be no human culture.
With symbols, humans can transmit feelings and ideas. Only through symbolic capacity can we think and talk about the past and future. These features distinguish humans from other animals. Language and thought are closely related.
Track 7
Nature
The Greeks applied the term nature to what defines something: properties, composition, and genes. This essence makes a thing what it is and different from others.
Human nature, our essence, is common to all humans yet different from all others. Throughout history, it has been said that our essence is having souls, being rational animals, or being provided with awareness.
Culture
A complex whole including knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquired by humans as members of society.
Need for Culture in Humans
The closed world of animals contrasts with the open world of humans. Humans lack instincts to resolve situations spontaneously, but they have colonized continents and created new ways of life.
The lack of instincts makes humans solve problems using their cognitive capacity. They can handle, transmit, and store information, having multiple answers for the same problem. In return, humans lack instinct.
Socialization Process
The socialization process develops neural capacity, which would otherwise be lost. These capabilities allow us to adapt to the community and live in society.
Features
- Learning cultural patterns.
- Interiorization.
- Psychological stability.
This process occurs through relationships with others, deeply affecting how we think.
Steps
Socialization is lifelong but determinate in childhood. There are two distinct phases depending on individual trajectory:
- Primary socialization
- Secondary socialization
Agents
The socialization process is carried out by groups. In family, behavior patterns and values are learned, stimulating cognitive ability to speak. Schools are another important agent.
Cultural Diversity
Different cultures have different socialization processes, sometimes causing conflicts due to varying criteria for interpreting the world. While human nature is universal, cultures are private. Even universal cultural traits are used differently depending on the culture. Cultures mingle and modify, leading to multiculturalism (coexistence of diverse cultures in one space).
Ethnocentrism
This is an attitude of cultural difference, believing one’s culture is adequate and superior to others. Imperialists adopted this attitude to invade peoples. This identifies cultural development exclusively with one’s own culture. Anything different is deemed irrational and primitive.
Relativism
This arises to overcome ethnocentric prejudices. We can only understand a cultural trait within its originating culture, and all world cultures are of equal worth. This attitude of respect meant a clear advance in tolerance, but it fosters a new problem: considering tradition unchangeable and not fostering intellectual dialogue, leading to stagnation rather than evolution.
Cultural Pluralism
In an increasingly multicultural world, a consistent attitude is required. Cultural pluralism defends intellectual dialogue and respect for diverse cultures in the same geographic space.
Cultural pluralism proposes a model where all cultures meet on equal conditions. Harmony and experiencing cultural traits are important. This model recognizes all cultures’ opportunity to be different yet equal in dignity and rights.
Track 9
The Moral Act
We all have an assessment of our actions and more.The fact be moral is marked in our nature, because morality seems to be one of the defining traits of being humano.todo moral act and a voluntary action that is subject to ethical evaluation.
- Action, moral norms and values
For an act is moral defindo is required to be a voluntary act. Furthermore, it should be examined and trial on the social cualificada good or bad. This trial is marked under principles or moral values, and constitute moral norms, sometimes settling into writing codes of conduct.
– Standards and moral values: they are particular aspects of the set of habits and cultural beliefs of each community and adquírense through certain processes of socialization
Despite different cultural forms and moral concepts are universal transcultural ethical. Thus, some values such as loyalty and filial love are principles that are manifest in all human cultures.
Tema10
- Ethics in facing the challenges of modern society
- Ethics establishes moral judgments relating to an action or decision. In this kind of judgments are present terms such as good, bad, right ….
- Morality refers to a set of customs, beliefs, values and norms of a person who guides us about the good or bad or right or wrong of an action.
- Distinction between ethics and morals
The two disciplines relate to the standards that should guide our behavior in a mandatory way.
- Moral: Refers to a code of prohibition and limitation accepted by a social group or moralists.
- Ethics: examines the physiologic principles underlying code of conduct that constitutes morality.
Thus, while the moral and correct, ethics and an abstract reflection which allows to qualify human behavior in terms of badness and goodness.