Sociobiology and Human Culture

Abstract

Abstract Had I been born in central Papua New Guinea a century ago, odds are that I would have considered myself humiliated had I been an adult seen in public without my penis sheath, despite the fact that my penis sheath would have constituted essentially my only “clothing.” I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, however, and if I were to wander around my current neighborhood in Tempe, Arizona, outfitted in traditional New Guinean fashion, I would be arrested in short order. ou do not need to be told that the difference in what constitutes appropriate attire varies enormously, and that is true even within Papua New Guinea today, where a great many men have traded in their penis sheaths for shorts and T-shirts. The diversity of cultural traditions, the rapidity of cultural change, and the capacity of children transferred from one society to another to adopt the local customs and local language all demonstrate that human behavior is highly flexible and dependent upon the capacity to learn. As a result, many persons have accepted the non sequitur that the genes which have survived past episodes of natural selection have little or no role to play in the development of our behavior.