The Adaptive Significance of Cultural Behavior

In this article, I argue that human social behavior is a product o f the eoevolution of human biology and culture. While critical o f attempts by anthropologists to explain cultural practices as i f they were independent o f the ability o f individual human beings to survive and reproduce, I am also leery of attempts by biologists to explain the consistencies between neo-Darwinian theory and cultural behavior as the result o f natural selection for that behavior. Instead, I propose that both biological and cultural attributes o f human beings result to a large degree from the selective retention of traits that enhance the inclusive fitnesses o f individuals in their environments. Aspects o f human biology and culture may be adaptive in the same sense despite differences between the mechanisms o f selection and regardless of their relative importance in the evolution of a trait. The old idea that organic and cultural evolution are complementary can thus be used to provide new explanations ]'or why people do what they do.