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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
May 12 - May 18, 2005 Edition
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Just us apes May 12, 2005 By Doug Cabral News about advancements in the ability of scientists to track the evolution of humankind through DNA, and maybe shift its future course a little, inspires mixed feelings. The emerging consensus regarding the genetic affinity of man and the great apes is not news to most members of my family. They seem, although they are not scientists, to have postulated just such a theory and found it repeatedly confirmed over the years. Nature versus nurture is not an issue at our house, where, all agree, it's a straight evolutionary line from simian to patriarch. Perhaps you have a different experience, but when folks I know and love see those graphics which appear from time to time in the science section of the New York Times, or in Science magazine, or National Geographic, there is an unmistakable shock of recognition which lights the customarily adoring faces that they turn toward me. I can see their fingers trace the path from gorilla to man as, mouths agape, they struggle to process what appears to them - scientifically untrained as they are - as a family resemblance. But, there is a counter argument that deserves consideration. Robert Boyd, a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has co-written a book with environmental scientist Peter Richerson, entitled Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Mr. Boyd discussed his book in an interview this week with a reporter from the New York Times. “My co-author … and I believe that when discussing the traits that have helped humans become such a successful species, we should avoid that old nature-versus-nurture debate. That's the view that behavior is either learned or genetic. Instead, we need to be talking about genes and culture, and how they interact with each other. “Most people think that culture is free from the shackles of biology because it is learned. That's wrong. Learned behavior is shaped by psychological mechanisms that have evolved, just like any other trait. Culture is special in that it is transmitted from individual to individual and evolves through the generations.” Culture matters, as Mr. Boyd says. We are no longer the creatures our prehistoric ancestors were. As Manuel says to Mr. Fawlty, “I learn, I learn.” But never mind: whenever published descriptions of human evolution are accompanied with graphics, they show gorillas, Neanderthals, modern humans (males, of course, never females), all sprung from the same scratching, nit-picking simian roots. Honestly, it could drive someone into the arms of the creationists. That there is some essential, though probably insignificant, correspondence between knuckle-dragging modern man and his knuckle-dragging ancestors is not entirely out of the question, I know. Evidence of the link offers itself unexpectedly from time to time. For instance, the trade news for journalists this week is full of the declining circulations of large and medium size daily newspapers nationwide. These papers have been losing readers for years, but more slowly than has been the case recently. Journalists, looking at the latest figures, quake fearfully. In reaction, they have lined up on both sides of the ball. Some say that the death knell for newspapers is sounding, and there's no way to escape extinction. In other words, genetically we are evolving away from newspapers. Nothing can be done about it. The other side makes the case that people - right-wingers, left-wingers, bloggers, TV, cable - are out to get us, but the cultural development of humankind will re-sharpen the appetite for news delivered on paper, and besides, newspapers have been around forever, so they'll be around forever. The skittery, even silly, reactions by journalists to the latest worrisome circulation trends has led to no deeply penetrating analyses. By my count, only Michael Kinsley, the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, hits the nail on the head, albeit ironically. “This alarming possibility threatens all of us,” Mr. Kinsley wrote on May 8, “because reading newspapers is, in the end, what makes us Americans. We are prudent, practical, common sense people. And what could be more common sense - more downright American - than chopping down vast acres of trees, loading them onto trucks, driving the trucks to paper mills where the trees are ground into paste and reconstituted as huge rolls of newsprint, which are put back onto trucks and carted across the country to printing plants where they are turned into newspapers as we know them (with sections folded into one another according to a secret formula designed for maximum mess and frustration and known only to a few artisans) and then piled into a third set of trucks that fan out before dawn across every metropolitan area dropping piles here and there so that a network of newspaper deliverers can go house-to-house hiding newspapers in the bushes or throwing them at the cat, and patriotic citizens can ultimately glance at the front page, take Sports to the john, tear out the crossword puzzle and throw the rest away? Newspapers are essential to every American and none more so than the fools and ingrates who have stopped buying them.” Before long, I'm convinced, one of the ink-stained brethren will come right out with it and declare, there oughta be a law requiring people to read the paper. But, even those of us whose knuckles have been rubbed raw traipsing along the evolutionary pathway know that times change, and even newspaper people will have to get in step. The genes and the culture interact, as Mr. Boyd says. Adaptation is the challenge. |
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