Human Cultural Evolution Outpaces Biological Evolution

Abstract

Abstract The biological evolution of the brain is mostly under genetic control. By contrast, cultural evolution primarily relies on the dynamics of knowledge acquisition, storage, and transmission. The timescale of culture production, diversification, and propagation thus outpaces, by several orders of magnitude, that of paleontological brain hominization. In the present chapter, the genetic versus epigenetic mechanisms involved in these two distinct evolutions and their intertwining are discussed. A significant outcome is the important interindividual variability of adult brain connectomics as a result of the essential contribution of synaptic epigenesis in the course of postnatal development, which becomes superimposed on genetic variability.