A New York Times piece highlights human culture as a positive evolutionary force. In the recent past, evolutionary scientists only believed disease and the effects of the environment drove natural selection.

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Although it does shield people from other forces, culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes, like new diets. And this interaction works more quickly than other selective forces, “leading some practitioners to argue that gene-culture co-evolution could be the dominant mode of human evolution,” Kevin N. Laland and colleagues wrote in the February issue of Nature Reviews Genetics.

How do you see culture impacting the evolution of humans? What have customs and traditions had to do with our survival?

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