Culture and environment: the myth of environmental ancestor

With the spread of environmentalist movement, becoming stronger because the powerful threat of global warming, is pretty common to hear about the idea of ancient people that lived in total harmony with nature and their traditional culture and ancient wisdom were much better adapted and had no harm to the environment.

The most common reference to those myths used to be Chief Seattle's letter to President of the United States at the time. The letter warns about harm to nature has important consequenses, like "The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself". Heartbreaking but sadly false (It was actually written by Ted Perry, Hollywood writer. Not because it wasn't an ecological true). And not just because of the author of the letter, but where could they learn that lesson.

Human Impact in ancient environment

The humankind has spread all over the world, adapting himself to every environment that has faced. Mountains, jungles, oceans, "polar cold" and even space. But in each one has made an impact.

The very faraway islands of New Zealand are great places to check this out. Because their positions on the world map, those islands have been one of the last places that humans have colonized. The first polynesian people arrived just 1000 years ago which, for archeological record, is the same as yesterday.

Human settlement map by genetics studies(that match with archeological record). When first humans arrived to NZ, in Europe Carolingian Empire had fallen, Vikings had reached America, toltecs had reached their maximum civilization point and Reindeer had extinct in Scotland

This people originated Maori culture (very famous around the world because of haka, war dance used by All Blacks, national rugby team of New Zealand). Maori used to practice gather-hunting and horticulture as well. Their beliefs are animist (which means they give soul to nature and natural forces), and that is why people relate them with environmental beliefs.

Despite being a coast away in the ocean, Maori culture is also away to be the realm of utopia. As it happened on the rest of the world, where hunt-gathering populations killed big fauna (as optimal foraging theory said, are the most efficient to hunt, means more calories by less work/hour) Maoris hunted several species to the point of extinct them.

Map that shows native forest extension in 1000 (when Maoris arrived), in 1840 (when europeans arrived) and now

In NZ, Maoris extinguished by direct action (hunt or habitat destruction) or indirect action (introducing of other species as rats and dogs): 40 species of birds, 1 of bat, 3 o 4 of frogs, several lizards. Among those animal we found Moa, big fauna, big non-flying bird, bigger than ostrich (some times 3 meters/ 10 feet tall). Also Haast's Eagle, an eagle so big that used to hunt Moas.

Those are not the only islands where such a thing has happened. In Madagascar were extinguished giant land turtle, elephant bird, giant lemur, pygmy hippo, among others. Same has happened in Great Britain with elephants, lions, reindeer, beavers, bison. In Hawaii, giant geese. In Chipre, elephants and deers. In caribbean islands giant rodents and colossal owl. For instance, in Eastern Island the damage was so huge that they cut off all trees and hunted all animals. The ecological impact was so brutal that conflicts started among human populations and war and even cannibalism had happened. (on next article).

Sources:

http://envirohistorynz.com/2009/12/15/impacts-of-the-maori-on-the-environment/
http://frentepopulardejudea-nenya.blogspot.com/2011/11/haciendo-el-indio-la-falsa-carta-del.html
Cohen M.K. 1994. Demographics and human expansion.
Harris M. 1986 Canibals and Kings

Culture Science IV: Neuroscience

The neurosciences are actually a complicated set of disciplines. From neurobiology to cognitive psychology. But, the element that unite them is the brain. All study the brain, either to unravel its physical- chemical processes to discover certain behavioral traits. It's not weird that they was found in front with the culture. This science has had a popular boom thanks to technological advances, especially from fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that lets you see what we had no idea before, inside a brain while it works.

The Brain Shape Culture

To understand culture we must first know how brain works. We know for example, which is made as a complex network of neurons that transmit electrical signals to various specialized areas in the cerebral cortex or other subparts. We also know that is divided into hemispheres that control different functions of our personality, but let's see what appear to be key to understanding how culture works:

1 - Visual Perception: By estimations, our visual capacity occupies over 30% of the brain cortex, is a central and complex element. The human brain receives from the eye a incomplete image, stained and inverse, is the brain that is responsible to rebuild those signals into a readable image and makes it auto-completing the information it receives with the previously stored information. This feature is essential because allows us to identify faces and read visual aspects about the others, as markers of social status all at once. First impressions count.
 

2 - Memory: Two memories exist: short and long term. The first is so mutable that does not tolerate more than 2 to 7 elements nor for more than 6-30 seconds. The second one recorded only the important,so as the vision, the brain auto - complete the rest of the information that we need to know. But the long term memory is highly plastic, and is modifiable each time a memory is invoked, as can be seen in the following experiment. Such plasticity is able to force significant changes in brain structure, even in ways that not only involve memory.
 

National Geographic: Test Your Brain Episode 3... por procrastinator87

3 - Language: the ability to communicate through signs, designated in Broca's area (spoken language) and Wernicke (understanding language), it is vital to understand the culture, but as the vision, we are able to distinguish shades and harmonies (Tour of Heschl). As such sarcastic tone or alarm, let us understand that paralinguistic communication supplementing meaning.
 

4 - Mirror neurons: Due to an error in an experiment with monkeys in 1996 at the University of Parma, Italy, researchers found that humans and other animals possess mirror neurons, in other words, empathy. What is surprising is that brain activity is exactly the same between a subject eating and other looking to eat. In the brain, there is no difference. This development allows us to imitation learning and socialization. Our brain is developed to generate that connection with others and be able to read emotions expressed in the faces of the other (hence our keen ability to interpret), is undoubtedly the biological basis of communication and culture.

Culture shapes the brain

But brain and culture not only have a linear relationship, both feed back. And the ability of the brain can manifest culture and contain certain fundamental aspects of it, the culture also changes brain structures. The experiences and the environment in which we live build our mental structure. Not only think differently, our brain be organized differently! but beware, the brain with new experiences is changing, as well as culture does. Do not represent a fixed reality.
 

Many anthropological studies have proved (or disproved) universality of Human Psychology, putting them to the test in the field in different cultural contexts, and also had captured and described hundreds of individual processes in such cultures, but no one had seen what worked in the brain.
 

A study by MIT and Stanford University verified these observations through the famous fMRI , applied to U.S. population and newly migrated from eastern Asia. Their findings found that different brain areas were activated compared to the same stimulus, found that Americans were more individualistic and dominant, while Asians were developing more comfortably and submissively collective .

Another observation very common among different cultures are the colors. The Eskimos had more than 9 words to refer to the white of the snow, where an observer from another culture just looks white. In the other hand Himba  confuses green from the blue, for theirs is the same color, a little experiment here.

BBC Short Video (7 min)

However, still begs the questions, where is the culture is stored? In the human brain there is no specific place where we can read the cultural codes, but separate elements, language area, memory area, area of abstraction, but not a reader of social status, custom, norm. The possibilities are in the organization of the brain. The structure of the brain is the neuronal dimension of culture or, as noted by Roger Barthes, be it in external relations of  brains, in exobrain. The culture would be in those connections among brains a supra-organic dimension, where the culture would be stored. Culture is the extension of neural networks of the brain.

Sources:
Barthes R. Anthropology of the Brain
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/techtalk52-14.pdf  http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/psychology-0111.html

Analysing culture: Respect

Ethnocentrism: Issues for a (cientific) analysis of culture

Studying cultures as "a particular collective mind set of a particular social group", has an issue. If each person belong to a culture, their own mind set, so does the person who is studying cultures. That means you could try to measuring other culture with your own cultural values, and that wouldn't be objective neither cientific. Measure cultures with your own cultural values doesn't help you to understand others, because different cultures have different goals in life. Doing that, you only get an obvious and selfish conclusion: your culture is the best and you are the best person under your own rules! That has no sense and is called ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism is not only for those who research cultures, that happen too with everyone who has to face others cultures. In some sense, ethnocentrism is useful to keep coherency with your own culture (if people don't feel comfotable in their own culture, there is a problem, right?). But too much ethnocentrism conduce to racism and xenophobia. But often just give us more simple problems or tons of headache. As happened with WHO (World Health Organization), when they tried to vaccinate african people for first time. African parents avoided vaccinate their sons because bacteria and virus weren't part of their cultural explanation of illness and disease. Furthermore they who had done it, had experienced fever and other symptoms. Even some thought that whites were trying to kill them. Ethnocentrism made that WHO thinks western medicine had the same status in Africa than within western societies as European, Australian or USA. While africans response was rational - because in their experience nothing good had come from white people- WHO blamed unrational response and ignorance. Result: Failure. A failure that could be avoid from cultural relativism perspective.

Cultural relativism

One solution is given by historic particularism. Following this thought- basis of culturalism-, the key concept is cultural relativism. That means to analyze a culture we have to do it in their own frame, considering all their elements and how their interact. Each culture has their own context and history and it cannot be compare with others without pay attention to this frame. Every culture can only be interpreted in their own context that allow us to a cientific approach and reduce (but not delete) researcher bias.

In that way we can explain why !Kung in subsaharian Africa still practice "hunting and gathering" despite know agricultural technics. If we put their economy in their context (environment) we can see that Kalahari desert is not a place for agriculture. Following Howell and Lee calculations, to get the health and diet that !Kung already have, they only must work 3 hours per day while their agricultural neighbors have to do it for 10 hours and  have worse health. Who is more efficient? However Namibia and Botswana governments have put pressure to make them change their lifestyle and making them work more, forcing to adopt agriculture and cattle farming. Today !Kung have to face poverty and social issues.

Relativism problems

In many regions in Africa and Asia there is a islamic branch that used to practice female circumcision, which is clitoris mutilation when women reach adult age (that could be 12 years old). This means women have to face this painful tradition because the social beliefs of clitoris is a masculine feature that has to be eliminated. Just because is a cultural practice, their practioners accuse their detractor to be ethnocentric and defend their position basis on culture, despite the brutal torture.

Another example was south african apartheid. Where M.W. Eiselen used cultural relativism to justify social segregation between whites and blacks. His position was apartheid (segregation) protects cultural identity and integrity of africans cultures, where weren't desirable their westernization, because could cause social desintegration.

Does relativism applies to those situations?

Possible dilema solution

First we have to understand cultural relativism is an analysis tool to get a deeper understanding inside a context but not justify any practice just because is a cultural traditions. Often happens that after an analysis we get a contradiction. And that is what happen in the first case. Women are not agree but they cannot avoid it because they live in a masculine culture and have no power to change it. Nevertheless some changes have come. Same happen in the second case, when apartheid was abolished.

Justify hastily and without context a practice just because belong to a cultural tradition is bad as ethnocentrism and is not cultural relativism but moral relativism. Culture allows human adaptation because is dinamic, change across the time. That means is no argument to defend any behavior, but as a system, as a context. Cultural relativism doesn't forbid us to get an opinion, after deep analysis, and want some change.

Ferraro y Andriatta, 2010, Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective.
Harris M. Cultural Anthropology
Kuper A. 2001, Culture: Anthropologist' Account