Culture may be encoded in DNA

POSTED BY: kpo
UPDATED: Saturday, September 5, 2026 00:24
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CITIZEN

Friday, July 2, 2010 8:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
if so, that would be a lock. Personally, I think they're golden here.

Almost certainly.

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I skipped the vast swath of this thread that was not discussing birds. Birds are relatively simple animals, other creatures are more complex, and it's hard to figure what they would cotton to, but here we have some pretty clear indications of what might explain some of human behavior.

Although some birds are fairly simple, others are complex and intelligent hunters, who have even shown tool use. I think saying "birds are simple" is rather a sweeping statement.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

AGENTROUKA

Friday, July 2, 2010 10:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

For instance, children of indo Europeans love indo european fairy tales. They are their favorite stories as children, and as adults, given basically zero media or cultural encouragement in that direction. Equally I find people of other backgrounds are drawn to other cultures. I know many people who are so liberal that they react against their own europeans backgrounds in favor of others, and still show this draw to indo European backgrounds, listen to classical music, read fairy tales and can't stand rap, hip hop or R&B, and I have to figure they've really tried.

Now none of this is an indicator of BEHAVIOR. it's an indication of tastes, like those of the bird. Those tastes in the birds also affect their mating behavior and social structure, and so if they have a genetic basis would be passed on.

Emphasis mine, and I sincerely dispute this. The media and cultural encouragement toward European cultural heritage (of which fairy tales are a large element) is everywhere, and the identification of people with different backgrounds for cultural heritage connected to theit background is probably due to the cultural encouragement within their own family/community that European-descendents lack.

Why would you assume that European cultural heritage is not omnipresent in America?

I find nothing to suggest that it might be genetic.

BYTEMITE

Friday, July 2, 2010 2:34 PM

Quote:
The male birds modified their song towards a common song, they did so to attract the females, I think thats very likely. That would point to a genetic tendency.

After being introduced to "model" male vocal coaches.

The preference might exist in the females, but more based on the geography and the familiar than the genetics. And males seem to learn the songs, as opposed to relying on genetics. The genetics conclusion just does not necessarily follow.

DREAMTROVE

Friday, July 2, 2010 8:42 PM

Byte, I missed that.quote?

Rouka,

Yes of course, this si why our media is so focused on Odin Zeus and the Vikings and never pays any attention to mid eastern cultural figures such as Jesus Christ, Mohammed, david or Moses, and completely ignores Israel and Iraq and focuses on Finnish folk music instead. Oh wait, no, it doesn't. Despite the fact that there are as many Finns as Israelis and Finland has arguably more impact on our society technologically, we never hear anything about the people their language and culture. curiously, we here a fair amount about Israel. It's sort of like, despite the fact that this ipad was made by a Taiwanese company, it's name appears nowhere. The nation that jst sent us the AWhale has a population the size of Iraq, a tremendous role in the US economy, far greater than Iraq, which has dominated the news for thirty years. The recent invasion of taiwan by china prompted no reaction from the us, nor the media. Curious that.

No, I see none of this European cultural influence in the media. In fact, I think it's actively discouraged.

Citizen.

You are correct.

BYTEMITE

Friday, July 2, 2010 9:04 PM

I reread both articles, and I couldn't find the reference again. I think it was a remnant artifact of the "strapping young birds become model singers" statement.

In any case, clearly the birds learn the songs. Successive generations of males "tweak" the songs after learning them, there is always an individual touch to each bird's song.

The article claims that the birdsongs after four generations are "more like the wild bird song." But how do they measure this?

Even if they show that successive generations have become comparatively "more like wild bird song," how do we know that this is genetic? How do we know that the wild bird song variant doesn't just represent the most easy and convenient arrangement? Like shorthand words in English slowly becoming accepted spelling (through vs. thru)?

If it was genetic, why did the first generation deviate in the first place? Wouldn't the bird song have remained the same, despite being put in soundproof boxes and despite being isolated from hearing the "correct" version?

AGENTROUKA

Friday, July 2, 2010 11:14 PM

DT,

When I said European cultural heritage, I meant mostly fiction as carried on by the European literary tradition, as well as family traditions, habits, religious traditions, music etc. I should have been clearer there, that cultural heritage didn't mean news media.

To call Jesus a middle Eastern cultural figure makes about zero sense. Christianity is one of the most dominant pieces of cultural heritage that most European countries share. Heck, the popular image of Jesus is that of a light-skinned European man! Christianity is also very dominant in the U.S., brought by the same European settlers who brought the rest of their culture, from food recipes to holiday traditions to dress style to music.

You used fairy tales as an example and dispute any cultural or media encouragement for European Americans to prefer them. Considering that, for example, Grimm's fairy tales were collected from oral tradition and then published in the 19th century, they would carry themes that connect pagan European images with Christian symbolism going back centuries. Just to give an idea of the time frame and scope of cultural saturation I mean. The European settlers in the U.S. brought their tastes and traditions with them and preserved them for a time even on a level of nationality. That for generations their descendents would gravitate toward European-style culture and identify with it needs no genetic basis to explain. European fairy tales just fit that imparted cultural vocabulary.

That and European-Americans are probably quite simply read these Grimm's fairy tales more likely than they are read non-European fairy tales, because that's what their parents know. In addition to being culturally primed, they simply have more exposure to them, explaining their preference.

Then there's Disney, or really any other book/movie/tv show that bases itself on European fairy tales or literature. Cinderella, the travelling hero going as far back as Ulysses, the ultimate heroic sacrifice to mirror Jesus, etc. It's all over.

And that's really just the fairy tale example.

Unless you really misread my earlier post to refer to news media, I can't see how you can argue that European heritage is not all over American culture.

KPO

Saturday, July 3, 2010 12:19 AM

Quote:
Yeah, I'm doubting the assumption that this is "culture." How much of the song has to do with the physical structure of the bird? Are their beaks and throats designed for that particular sound, since it's the only one that species makes?

Surely, to some extent - but why did it take 3 or 4 generations for the song to evolve back to normal sound? This suggests that both learning, and innate sense (of how the song should sound) is involved.

Quote:
It seems that the bird scientists are arguing along the lines that English babies left alone for four generations will genetically revert to speaking English, Chinese babies speaking Chinese, etc.

No, I don't think they're suggesting that. The birdsong is more than language it's a mating call - which is a display of beauty designed to attract a mate (think peacocks), not just to notify one... So it's an art/culture thing more than a language one.

Heads should roll

KPO

Saturday, July 3, 2010 12:40 AM

Quote:
Even if they show that successive generations have become comparatively "more like wild bird song," how do we know that this is genetic? How do we know that the wild bird song variant doesn't just represent the most easy and convenient arrangement? Like shorthand words in English slowly becoming accepted spelling (through vs. thru)?

Interesting theory - perhaps we would then expect each bird to slowly tweak the song, rather than it needing a new generation to come along and tweak it.

Quote:
If it was genetic, why did the first generation deviate in the first place? Wouldn't the bird song have remained the same, despite being put in soundproof boxes and despite being isolated from hearing the "correct" version?

It's both learnt and genetic, is the impression we get from this study.

Have you read the actual study, or just articles on it? I say that because skepticism is fine, but don't expect the article to have answers for all your (quite valid) questions - that's not the article's job.

Heads should roll

KPO

Saturday, July 3, 2010 12:49 AM

Quote:
I suspect something like this happened, and it's simpler than people are making it out to be:

1) the females mated with available males,even if they found their songs whiny, because there was no competition.

This would be a serious flaw because as you say, there would be a competition factor. But my understanding of the study was that there was no breeding involved with the subjects, they were just given new hatchlings to tutor. That was what I got from:

"But then scientists let the isolated birds give voice lessons to a new round of hatchlings. They found that the young males imitated the songs — but they tweaked them slightly, bringing the structure closer to that of songs sung in the wild. When these birds grew up and became tutors, their pupils’ song continue to conform, with tweaks."

Heads should roll

DREAMTROVE

Saturday, July 3, 2010 1:36 AM

Rouka,

Jesus is completely middle eastern, whether you take his Nazarene zoroastrian-Syrian reality or the sword from the mouth revelations character, its nothing European. But why we have all of this is that were ruled by a judeochr istian elite. That you also are is not proof of anything genetic.

I was referring to, as children. I was in a large family. We knew many other families. I watched the families of children form disparate backgrounds select stories they wanted to hewr again, none of us had tv or any serious outside influence, and without strong influences from one another, we all selected the same stories.

These, as it turns out, were the stories that were passed down, with a distinctive Celtic-European flare to them. It was these stories which had become popular with children hundreds of years ago, and that those children had asked to have those stories reread, or new ones just like them. Ultimately it all comes down to alice in wonderland, as a sort of synthesis of what it is that european children want. The idea has been nagging at me for a while, because of the fairly obvious innate slant in its favor.

Disney exists to produce this product because the children want it. They are a mercenary concern. When enough people play to those desire, that becomes culture. They create the content to fill the instinctive longing, and the result is our own tailored fairy tale.

What we are sold, as a population, is a judeochristian tradition, which largely does not appeal to the children of this culture, because it is not our fairy tale.

Check out sometime how iran has rebranded Islam, and recreated it's image to fit the persian mind, and what that mind wants, which I would assume would be Scheherazade' just as the european Christians have rebranded christianity into Narnia, and Harry Potter. If what you say was true, then there would be no need to do this.

Evolution branches out to fill all available space, and then settles down into a niche. So to with culture.

Byte,

It seems pretty obvious to me. Listen to the audio files. They start out random, and evolve towards the wild song. It's natural selection. Some songs attract the females more than others. They keep trying new things until they get it right. I, personally, find the journey more interesting than the destination, and I would think others would find the same thing, but maybe only others of my genetic background ;)'

Seriously though, its pretty cut and dried. Listen to the songs, and envision the whole scenario, and mentally walk through how it happens, how it has to happen, and you'll realize, I suspect, that this is the way it is. Its the guiding hand of evolution, and of that means that on some level, the creationists are right, and were all walking towards a preplanned destiny, then sobeit, at least to some extent.

The argument works because it makes sense, and the alternative does not. There is no reason for a mating song to exist at all if there is not a matching pattern algorithm in the females brain. There would be no slow evolution of songs if they were simply taught, so we know this is not the case. Listen to the songs.

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