Humans Are In The Middle Of "A Great Evolutionary Transition", New Paper Claims

There’s a problem with that “March of Progress” picture that’s so often used to illustrate our species’ development: it ends. Human evolution, the image implies, began in apehood and finishes here, with us. We’re done.

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It’s poetic, but it’s wrong. Evolution, famously, has no end goal – and there’s no reason to assume we’re already at the pinnacle of our species’ journey. In fact, as a new study from researchers at the University of Maine suggests, we might be right in the middle of a major evolutionary shift – and it’s one that’s totally different from anything we’ve seen before.

“Human evolution seems to be changing gears,” Tim Waring, an associate professor of economics and sustainability at the University, said in a statement this week. “The importance of culture […] is accelerating.”

The destination of life

The story of life is one of small changes and major shifts. The growth from a single-celled organism to a multicellular one is, on paper, not that big – but philosophically, it’s a huge leap, paving the way for more complex life.

We can see a similar sea-change in the late Jurassic period, with the emergence of eusocial species – that is, the kind of hyper-social groups we see in organisms like ants or termites. For such animals, the individual is less important than the colony – a kind of “superorganism” that has its own wants, needs, and intelligence. 

Eusociality isn’t unknown in mammals – the naked mole-rat is a classic example of a milky critter that lives in colonies – but whether it can be applied to humans specifically is a question that’s been debated for decades now. 

For Waring and coauthor Zachary Wood, the answer seems to be somewhere in the middle. Humans aren’t necessarily eusocial creatures, they argue – but we’re on our way: “In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives,” Waring explained back in 2021, after the publication of a paper on the same topic. 

We don’t need to look far for an example of humans acting this way, he pointed out – we have a perfect example in the coronavirus pandemic, only a few years ago. In almost every nation, people reacted not as millions of individuals, but as a community – working as a “national immune system,” Waring said, to save society at whole from the disease.

“The ‘society as organism’ metaphor is not so metaphorical after all,” he said. “This insight can help society better understand how individuals can fit into a well-organized and mutually beneficial system.”

A changing species

If humans are eusocial today – or tomorrow, if we believe the new paper – it’s only as the result of eons of development. Starting perhaps with the spread of agriculture, human societies have gradually grown stronger and more self-supporting, providing the very conditions that allow individuals within them to create the advancements that protect them.

“Cultural organization makes groups more cooperative and effective,” explained Waring. “And larger, more capable groups adapt – via cultural change – more rapidly.” 

“It's a mutually reinforcing system,” he said. “And the data suggest it is accelerating.”

The argument is obvious when viewed through a historical lens. Ten thousand years ago, a society would support itself by promoting the mass growth of crops, increasing individuals’ health and longevity – and, not coincidentally, making them more likely to stick around and perform some kind of community-supporting role. 

Two thousand years ago, we had infrastructure like roads and aqueducts and public toilets. Two hundred years ago, societies were complex and advanced enough to create the first vaccines, improving life expectancy and saving millions of lives from diseases like smallpox. 

And today, we have personalized gene editing technologies that can save newborns from genetic illnesses that could, in literally any other time period, be fatal within days. 

Each of these advancements was the result of cultural evolution, not genetic – built on the foundations of all the invention and understanding that came before it. Who knows where we’ll be in a few decades?

“Cultural evolution eats genetic evolution for breakfast,” said Wood, a researcher in ecology and environmental sciences at Maine. “It's not even close.”

A dispassionate process

The role of culture in human evolution is impossible to overstate. Indeed, the pair point out, our societies are already sufficiently advanced to “preempt” genetic problems: more than three quarters of us wear vision-correcting eyeglasses, for example, and about one in three births in the US are via C-section. Both of these are solutions to problems that would, in the “natural” world, be at best disabling and at worst fatal.

“When we learn useful skills, institutions or technologies from each other, we are inheriting adaptive cultural practices,” Waring explained. “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.”

“Ask yourself this: what matters more for your personal life outcomes, the genes you are born with, or the country where you live?” he continued. “Today, your well-being is determined less and less by your personal biology and more and more by the cultural systems that surround you – your community, your nation, your technologies.”

It’s a strangely wholesome conclusion we’re forced to draw: that the story of humanity is one in which we come together to solve all our biggest problems. But of course, it comes with a flipside: “Evolution can create both good solutions and brutal outcomes,” pointed out Wood – and cultural evolution shouldn’t be confused with “progress” or superiority.

“We are not suggesting that some societies, like those with more wealth or better technology, are morally ‘better’ than others,” Wood said. “We believe this [work] might help our whole species avoid the most brutal parts [of evolution].”

Still, if their hypothesis is correct, it should be testable – and the pair intend on doing just that. They’re now developing mathematical and computer models of the process, and hope to soon be able to measure how fast humanity is switching from a species primarily governed by genetics to one ruled by cultural and societal change.

“If cultural inheritance continues to dominate,” Waring said, “our fates as individuals, and the future of our species, may increasingly hinge on the strength and adaptability of our societies.”

The study is published in the journal BioScience.