Learn how only humans were able to develop a global civilization from an evolutionary perspective.

Why do we need to interpret the origins of civilization through an evolutionary lens?

Humans have long sought to understand the origins of their civilization and have come up with many compelling answers. Most of these answers focus on humans as civilizing agents and explain how humans created civilizations. However, no single discipline has been able to provide a universal answer to the origins of human civilization around the world. In particular, the current interpretations of sociology and political science, which are mainly derived from Western and East Asian civilizations, have been limited in their ability to explain the cause-and-effect relationship while encompassing the origins of all civilizations in the world. In order to overcome the above limitations and find the answer to the question of how various human civilizations could be born all over the world and how only humans could achieve civilization, we need to look at the characteristics that are common to all human beings and special to humans that are different from animal societies. I will look for the biological characteristics of humans as a species that satisfy all of the above conditions and develop them to explain the causal relationship between the question “How could only humans develop a global civilization?” from an evolutionary perspective.

Human civilization began with the expression of cognitive genes

Humans have always had a weak physical condition, with poorer mobility and evasion skills than other animals and a much weaker body than other animals of the same size. In fact, humans in their natural state were so frail that hunter-gatherers were hunted down by predators and the meat left over from their carcasses was taken by hyenas and vultures, and humans used stone tools to split their bones and drink the marrow.
However, humans possessed advanced cognitive genes that allowed them to develop creativity, understanding, and thinking skills that surpassed those of other animals. These cognitive genes were crucial for humans to form civilization. They allowed humans to utilize other species, other inanimate objects, and even abstract things for their own survival. To name a few examples, humans were able to live in settlements, using nearby trees, stones, and other materials to make clothing and shelter; they began farming and ranching, which involved feeding “livestock” and managing and using seeds to increase productivity and ensure a stable food supply; and they used the abstract idea of animism to help unite their groups. All of these activities are important enough that they are often classified as conditions for the emergence of human civilization. At this point, human behavior in civilization was mostly about survival.

Civilization is a giant collection of cognitive genes and the memes they create

However, if we look at the development of civilization since then, we can see that the higher cognitive genes have created a huge byproduct. Cognitive abilities such as creativity have been unleashed out of control, and the development of cognitive genes has led humans to engage in behaviors that cannot be directly explained as survival, such as ideologies and philosophies. This unbridled expression of cognitive power gave rise to cultural replicators, memes, and allowed human civilization to flourish.
Some might argue that the cognitive genes and memes co-evolved in a complementary way. But I disagree. I believe that cognitive genes develop because of memes, which is a kind of complementary theory that cognitive genes develop because we need them to use our brains. Therefore, the development of cognitive genes because of memes is a story of mutations that have evolved and continue to evolve in favor of survival. However, since the process of mutation is random, it is absurd that cognitive genes would evolve to make memes better. Therefore, I believe that memes are a byproduct of the overexpression of cognitive genes.
In order for a meme to survive after it is born, the host of the meme must be highly capable of replicating it, and replication of a meme is learning. Of course, other animals are capable of learning, but humans have a much more advanced learning ability that allows them to imitate each other’s behavior regardless of whether it is directly related to their survival. Therefore, memes can only emerge from humans who are capable of replicating cultural replicators.
Memes that have arisen and spread in this way have steadily differentiated, mutated, and created other memes, and through this process, civilization has steadily progressed. Perhaps the most representative example of a meme is money. In its natural state, money itself is not directly related to human survival. However, over a very long period of time after its invention, the meme of money was replicated from generation to generation and around the world, leading to a major shift in perception that money is necessary to survive in this civilization, and this shift in perception led to a steady stream of other memes such as capitalism, banking, economics, etc. Memes, which include not only abstract concepts such as knowledge, science, ideology, and religion, but also material concepts such as buildings and statues, are a concept that can explain human civilization, which is usually divided into mental and material civilizations, in a holistic and comprehensive manner, and the existence of memes is the biggest difference between human civilization and animal society. In other words, civilization is the accumulation of memes, and the increasing diversity of memes through evolution is civilization.

The beneficiaries of civilization are memes!

You might argue that memes are just a fragment of civilization, and that it’s unreasonable to interpret an entire civilization based on memes. However, if we analyze civilizations, we can prove that memes play a much more important role in civilization than their opinions, even a role that can be considered as a subject. When interpreting a very complex event like civilization, asking the beneficiary question can make the analysis easier. Who are the beneficiaries of human civilization? Let’s take an example of human behavior in civilization. Both the material and mental civilizations that make up most human civilizations serve to solidify human survival. For example, humans cooperate with their groups when there is conflict between groups to ensure their survival. When humans cooperate to defend their group, they do so not only for their own survival, but often to defend the ideology that the group shares. So, in this situation, the humans’ behavior is not only to ensure their own survival, but also to ensure the survival of the meme, which is an ideology. In most of these cases, both the human actor and the meme are the beneficiaries, but the important point is that humans often perform actions that have nothing to do with human survival, or even harm it. Take martyrdom and suicide, for example. Both behaviors are detrimental to human survival. However, one person’s act of sacrifice allows the meme of sacrifice to be replicated by many people in a group, so we can say that sacrifice is a beneficiary. In the case of suicide, for example, when someone commits suicide because of accumulated debt, the memes that are prevalent in society, such as capitalism and credit, which the suicidal person was fighting against, benefit from the suicide of an individual who is preventing them from replicating themselves. Of course, this conflicts with other memes, such as anti-suicide campaigns, but it’s a competition between memes, and it doesn’t change the fact that our behavior is driven by memes. In this way, some incomprehensible human behaviors that are far from personal survival can be explained from the perspective of a meme. Therefore, in this case, we can see that the ultimate beneficiary is Meme, and since all human behavior in a civilization can be interpreted by Meme, Meme is the entity that determines the lifestyle of human beings in a civilization. Therefore, it is clear that each Meme is an essential sub-element in explaining civilization, and it can be said that it is the subject of civilization, as it is expressed beyond the survival needs of individuals.

To understand civilization, you need to understand memes!

The cognitive genes that have enabled humans to create global civilizations unlike other animals are the ones that have developed memes. Thanks to advanced cognitive genes, humans in civilizations are responsible for creating and replicating memes, and conversely, human behavior and lifestyles are controlled by memes. A civilization is an ecosystem within a pool of memes that is made up of many different memes, just like the gene pool of a population, and the development of a civilization is the evolution of memes. Therefore, when we want to understand a civilization, we should look at the evolution and extinction of memes as we would an ecosystem. This method helps us to look at civilization from a third-party perspective by turning many questions about civilization, such as “How will our civilization develop in the future?” or “How will humans develop civilization?” into “How will our memes and genes be selected, mutated, and evolve in the future?”, making the analysis more objective and simple. Analyzing memes in this way is perhaps the most accurate way to interpret the foundations of civilization.