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Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change.It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission". [1]
An alternative definition of the term bioculture is all the practical aspects of the use of living things in culture, including agriculture, production of food and clothing, forestry, animal breeding and training, the pet trade, use of living things in science, zoos and aquariums, animal sports, and the raising of game for sport hunting.
It equated civilization with material culture (technology, cities, etc.) Because social evolution was posited as a scientific theory, it was often used to support unjust and often racist social practices – particularly colonialism, slavery, and the unequal economic conditions present within industrialized Europe.
Cultural ecology as developed by Steward is a major subdiscipline of anthropology. It derives from the work of Franz Boas and has branched out to cover a number of aspects of human society, in particular the distribution of wealth and power in a society, and how that affects such behaviour as hoarding or gifting (e.g. the tradition of the potlatch on the Northwest North American coast).
Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution, [1] was developed in the 1960s through early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution.
A further definition of culture is, "[s]ocially transmitted behavior patterns that serve to relate human communities to their ecological settings." [15] This definition connects cultural behavior to the environment. Since culture is a form of adaptation to one's environment, it is mirrored in many aspects of our current and past societies.
The intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization, a classic example being Chinese civilization and its influence on nearby civilizations such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam [47] Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres ...
Biocultural anthropology can be defined in numerous ways. It is the scientific exploration of the relationships between human biology and culture. [1] " Instead of looking for the underlying biological roots of human behavior, biocultural anthropology attempts to understand how culture affects our biological capacities and limitations."