Cultural stasis

Between them, stasis and invasions explain most of the jerky progress observed in the fossil record.

This post is about cultural stasis.

In biology, stasis refers to the observation that some living things do not change for extended periods of time. This phenomenon is probably caused by the existence of adaptive peaks. Adaptive peaks are mountains in fitness landscapes, where hill-climbing optimisation processes - like evolution by natural selection - can become stuck.

It has been hypothesised that adaptive peaks occur in cultural evolution too. For example, Dan Sperber refers to them as cultural attractors.

Looking at the evidence, it does appear to be true that some cultural entities persist for extended periods of time. For example:

• Coins date back thousands of years. The image shows some Electrum coins - which were minted around 600 BC.

  ---

• Hammers were used in the stone age - some 30,000 years ago. Hammers fossilize well - and so are the oldest human tool known.

  ---

• Matches are hundreds of years old. Friction matches were invented in the 1800s. Safety matches were invented in 1844. Matches have not changed very much since then.

  ---

• Pencils have not changed much for hundreds of years. A pencil eraser was added, but modern pencils are still very similar to early ones.

Why do the peaks not move around more when the surrounding ecosystem changes? Some ideas are just objectively good. They do not depend very much on the surrounding context.

It is not just simple ideas that can resist change. Alice in Wonderland has resisted change for many decades - as has Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In such cases, respect for the original seems to be largely responsible for the stasis.

Phylomemetic inertia and stabilizing selection are two of the most common explanations offered for stasis.