The Origin of All Culture

"An individual is not smart, according to our culture. An individual is merely lucky to be part of a system that has intelligence that happens to reside in them. In other words, be humble about this always. The real intelligence isn’t the property of an individual corporation – the real intelligence is the property of the universe itself." - John Mohawk

To wonder about the origin of culture, it's important to ask ourselves what makes culture so deeply necessary for humans.

In his book, The Sibling Society, Robert Bly offers up this possibility,

"One way to talk of the mystery of the large brain is to suppose that the human being at some point interrupted itself during its own womb development and emerged, unfinished, about a month early. The human fetus as it now exists has skipped the final finishing. A chimpanzee, which by contrast remains in the womb for the full term, is, when born, already integrated into the environment. The little ape, we could say, became finely tuned to forest life in the womb. Its large toe became capable of rotation, and hair grew all over its body. When the human being decided to take away the elaboration achieved in the final month, and so to undo the fine tuning, the whole situation was thrown into chaos.

The trade-off, however, is substantial. The human skull, which is now born with the sutures still wide open, can continue to expand, providing space for an enlarging neocortex. In other words, the unfinished human has a greater chance of ingenious evolutionary adaptation to a changing environment than does a finished, or fine-tuned, fetus. We do notice that the human infant’s head is startlingly large compared with the rest of its body . . . Apparently the plan was that the new baby-person would solve with its immense neocortex some of the challenges that the well-developed ape, which fits into a niche in its environment, solves through its built-in instinctual responses: “Man is programmed to learn to behave, rather than to react via an imprinted determinative instinctual code.”

Gabor Mate, in his book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, makes a similar point,

“Of all the mammals, we humans have the least mature brain at birth. Early in their infancy other newborn animals perform tasks far beyond the capabilities of human babies. A horse, for example, can run on its first day of life. 

Not for a year and a half or more can most humans muster the muscle strength, visual acuity and neurological control skills —perception, balance, orientation in space, coordination—to perform that activity. In other words, the horse’s brain development at birth is at least a year and a half ahead of our own—probably even more, in horse years. 

Why are we saddled with such a disadvantage in comparison to a horse? We can think of it as a compromise imposed by Nature. Our evolutionary predecessors were permitted to walk upright, which freed forelimbs to evolve into arms and hands capable of many delicate and complicated activities. Those advances in manual versatility and dexterity required a tremendous enlargement of the brain, especially of its frontal areas. Our frontal lobes, which coordinate the movement of our hands, are much larger even than those of our closest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee. 

These lobes, particularly their prefrontal areas, are also responsible for the problem solving, social and language skills that have allowed humankind to thrive. As we became a two-legged species, the human pelvis had to narrow to accommodate our upright stance. At the end of the nine months of human gestation the head forms the largest diameter of the body, the one most likely to get stuck in our journey through the birth canal. 

It’s simple engineering: any further brain growth in the uterus and we couldn’t be born. To ensure that babies can make their way out of the birth canal, the bargain forced upon our ancestors was that the human brain would be relatively small and immature at birth. On the other hand, it would undergo tremendous growth outside the mother’s body. 

In the period following birth, the human brain, unlike that of the chimpanzee, continues to grow at the same rate as in the womb. There are times in the first year of life when, every second, multiple millions of nerve connections, or synapses, are established. Three-quarters of our brain growth takes place outside the womb, most of it in the early years. By three years of age, the brain has reached 90 per cent of adult size, whereas the body is only 18 per cent of adult size. This explosion in growth outside the womb gives us a far higher potential for learning and adaptability than is granted to other mammals.”

If we are born largely, though not entirely, bereft of built-in instinctual responses then where are our original instructions on how to be a human being?

If we are very lucky, we will find those in our culture.

Daniel Siegel writes in his book The Developing Mind,

“For the infant and young child, attachment relationships are the major environmental factors that shape the development of the brain during its period of maximum growth... Attachment establishes an interpersonal relationship that helps the immature brain use the mature functions of the parent’s brain to organize its own processes.”

The infants brain shapes itself, largely, on the adults brain. And what is a healthy adult brain patterned on? Its culture. But what is a healthy culture patterned on? Nature.

A deep mystery of humans - our instructions of how be ourselves, are not carried inside ourselves but outside in the culture's songs, stories, games, rituals, proverbs and, of course, in the very natural world that inspired this all. 

What Is Culture?

A next question that might be asked is: What is culture?

Perhaps we could say that culture is that which turns our messes into nourishment. Culture is the medium of sustenance. Culture is that old friend who cooks our food over the fires of life in the antique pot of companionship so it's easier to digest. Culture doesn't eliminate work but he makes it possible that work might happen. Without the bacterial culture in our guts, our bodies die. Without human culture for us all to be inside, our souls die. Culture is the invisible, but needed, ally of the plant and animal world. 

Where does culture come from?

Another question is: where does culture come from?

And the answer to this is very clear: Culture comes from the soil. 

I remember a friend of mine pointing out to me that the microbes in our gut are the same as the microbes in the soil and that one of the primary differences between the plant world and and the animal world is this: plants live in the soil but animals carry the soil around inside them.

It's a staggering realization to come to. 

No soil, no chance at life. 

And then humans have crafted another level of culture - the culture we live inside - made up of stories, songs, dances, rituals and ceremonies, tools, hand made clothing and more - woven together like some antique blanket to keep us warm together. 

The Most Dependent Creature

In his book Returning to the Teachings, Rupert Ross writes:

"Basil Johnston speaks of the Ojibway hierarchy of Creation in Ojibway Heritage. It is not based on intelligence or beauty or strength or numbers. Instead, it is baed on dependencies. It places the Mother Earth (and her lifeblood, the waters) in first place, for without them there would be no plant animal or human life. The plant world stands second, for without it there would be no animal or human life. The animal world is third. Last, and clearly least important within this unique hierarchy, come humans. Nothing whatever depends of our survival. SO much seems to flow from that focus on dependencies. Because human beings are the most dependent of all, it is we who owe the greatest duty of respect and care for the other three orders. Without them, we perish. Our role is therefore not to subdue individual parts of them to meet our own short-term goals, for that may disturb the balances between them. Instead, our role is to learn how they all interact with each other so we can try our best to accomodate ourselves to their existing relationships. Any other approach, in the long run, can only disrupt the healthy equilibria that have existed for millions of years and which, obviously enough, created the conditions for our own evolution." 

Humans are new to this world. Though we deeply belong here, we are the closest thing there is to a guest in this world. We have been welcomed into something. Even in Genesis, the world was here before us. We were born into it. It was not born from us. It is not here for us.

First there was the soil.

Then animals discovered how to carry the soil within them so they could move.

Then humans came - the forgetful and foolish little brother - and seemed to need to craft another type of culture that could remind them how to be human.

Culture Is Modelled On Nature

I remember my friend Mark Morey speaking about this relationship between culture (as humans have fashioned, fermented and formed it) and nature (upon which humans so utterly rely). 

"Culture must be modelled on nature. This is where we get our original instructions from."

Children Play With Earth

We are beginning to see the cost to children of their not playing in the dirt. Every year, the studies role in showing us how our obsession with protecting our young ones from germs when they are young, costs them dearly in their health when they are older. 

If culture is the underwriter of our health and well being - what happens when we no longer interact with culture?

What happens when a generation of children no longer play outside in the dirt (the original culture) and can no longer be coaxed away from the screen to join into human culture?

It's not a hypothetical question. Just look around.

We might do well to heed the lyrics of the Arrested Development song Children Play With Earth:

Dig your hands in the dirt

Children play with earth

Gain knowledge of the big

But small earth around you

Dig your hands into the dirt

The dirt that made you

Get acquainted with the earth

The earth that eventually will take you

And the world that hopefully

Will appear to wake you

Children, play in the fields

Play in the grass, climb Mr. tree

Get to know each branch

Give it a name

For the branches resemble the many decisions

You will have to make in life

Eat of the earth children, grow an apple tree

Taste the apple, communicate

Watch and listen to the neglected mother of all

Short, tall children play with earth

Eat rhubarb wet from the rain

Beautiful fruits all the same

Pears, oranges and grapes from the vine

Children it is the earth's time

Culture Is Not A Free-For-All 

Creating culture isn't a free for all. It's not an anything goes arrangement. It's not a choose-your-own-adventure and make it up as you go along endeavour. 

Yes, culture ultimately shows up as a shared worldview and set of practices and ways of being. 

Culture is that which allows life to live. Culture is the invisible tree of life, hidden underneath our feet, that facilitates the flow or communication and sustenance - doing for the trees what the trees cannot do for themselves. The soil inside us takes the food we eat and turns it into something that can nourish us - breaking proteins into amino acids and carbohydrates into simple sugars. 

And so, human culture must play these same functions.

To say this another way: human culture is not human. The fundament of where culture comes from is not a human. It is the soil. And then it is the other animals - our older brothers. We're the new ones learning how to be cultured beings from them.

We all, plants and animals, depend on soil to live. We depend on that culture for our culture. 

On Cultured Humans

This modern civilization we live in is deeply anti-life and corrosive to genuine culture. Our modern farming practices have so deeply confused, compromised and killed the microbial and mycelial balance in the soils that the soil is losing its life and our health is being lost with it. 

The function of human culture must be, first and foremost, to preserve and protect, to feed and foster, to love and to labour on behalf of this larger life in which we are cradled and cared for. Whether it is in field or in forest, we rely on the soil to live. Any way of life that destroys this is anti-culture. Any way of life that leaves more topsoil than it had for future generations is worthy of claiming.

To say that we need more cultured humans is to say that we need humans whose way of being and moving in the world is informed by this life inside the soil.

To say we need cultured humans is not to say that humans are the source of culture but that they keep stirring the shared pot of their relationship and kinship and that they are fed by this. The culture is something they live inside of and feed but it is not them any more than the bacteria in our gut is us. 

If we would become more cultured, we would do well to turn our learning to how the culture of the world allows the world to flourish - to come to understand it's ways and means, what helps it along and what hurts it. 

Humans are here to protect and foster life. A cultured human might act in the same way for the world that the bacteria in our gut works for us. It might be something like that. Humans could be, and many have been and still are, the soil at work in the world. 

Isn't it a strange thing?

Our oldest ancestor, the soil, is made up of all of our ancestors - those ones, long dead, who have, in their dying, fed their own original ancestors as one day, all willing, we might do as well. This strange loam made up of all those who died before us is what carries the culture that makes our lives possible in the food we eat and in the culture we carry with us as we move through our lives and what inspires us in how we might live and be with each other in a good and beautiful way.

The fundament of our humanity is culture. 

The fundament of culture is not human.