Survival of the Fittest? Darwinian Adaptation and the Transmission of Information

Abstract

These people [the Maori] have carried their history in theirmemories for the last thirty generations, and what shouldsurprise us historical most is the continuity and thewonderful richness of the material they can supply.My word is pure and free of all untruth; it is the wordof my father; it is the word of my father's [father],I will give you my father's words just as I received them;royal griots do not know what lying is.So, why are my lords laughing? My lords think it isn't true?By the love of God, that's how it was!My father heard the story from his grandfather,who heard it from his grandfather …But the scribe who wrote Hamman's tablet made a mistake.He wrote “Aparha” on a tablet and, without getting heard,encased it in a clay envelope.”In 1652 Henry Holden expressed a precocious notion of the printed text:In fine therefore it is evident, that the Books of the Holy Scripture, especially of the New Testament … having been written, as it were, accidentally upon several occasions … a thousand and thousand times copied out by unlearned as well as learned Clerks (what a number of faults must there not needs be in these pies) printed over and over, God knowes how many times, and in how many places (how different these Editions must be with various Lections, let any man imagine?) translated I know not Into how many tongues by particular and private men (with what security of a faithful expression of the true sense, who dare say?)…