Culture may be encoded in DNA

[from Wired Science]

"Knowledge is passed down directly from generation to generation in the animal kingdom as parents teach their children the things they will need to survive. But a new study has found that, even when the chain is broken, nature sometimes finds a way.

Zebra finches, which normally learn their complex courtship songs from their fathers, spontaneously developed the same songs all on their own after only a few generations.

“Song culture can emerge ‘from the egg,’ as it were, if one allows for multiple generations to elapse,” Mitra said. ”In a similar way, we may ‘grow’ our languages.”

Though there are approximately 6,000 different languages in the world, they all share certain structural and syntactic elements. Even when a language arises spontaneously, as it did in the 1970s among deaf school children in Nicaragua, it adheres to these stereotypical human language features.

The study’s findings might have implications beyond language to other culturally-transmitted systems, said evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist Tecumseh Fitch, at the University of St. Andrews.

“We can think about both birdsong and human culture — especially language but including other aspects of human culture, like music, cuisine, dance styles, rituals, technological achievements, clothing styles, pottery decoration and a host of others — in similar terms,” he said. These culturally-transmitted systems must all pass through the filter of biology."


This is good to know... that long after contemporary communications technologies have absolutely butchered language, our ability to say things clearly and beautifully may one day reemerge from our genes.