{"id":246938,"date":"2026-11-09T10:32:34","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T16:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/humans-evolved-through-culture-more-than-biology"},"modified":"2026-11-09T10:32:34","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T16:32:34","slug":"humans-evolved-through-culture-more-than-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/humans-evolved-through-culture-more-than-biology","title":{"rendered":"Humans evolved through culture more than biology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Our biology is central to our survival. This is the evolutionary story and one we take to apply to all living beings equally. However, biologist, anthropologist, and UN and WWF consultant, <strong>Jonathan Loh<\/strong>, argues that humans are special in a fundamental way. In this article, he proposes the radical new idea that the transmission of cultural characteristics is more important for human survival than biological ones. We pass down our cultural traits using language, which allows us to transcend our ancestry and reach beyond our tribes.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The peculiar primate<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By any measure, <em>Homo sapiens <\/em>is an exceptional species. The world\u2019s 8.3 billion humans collectively weigh around 400 million tonnes, while all wild mammals combined make up only about 60 million tonnes. And if we add domesticated animals to our side of the scales, we plus our domesticates outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our biology is central to our survival. This is the evolutionary story and one we take to apply to all living beings equally. However, biologist, anthropologist, and UN and WWF consultant, Jonathan Loh, argues that humans are special in a fundamental way. In this article, he proposes the radical new idea that the transmission of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}