This book explores the nature of cultural and culturally structured
social and behavioral entities, their evolutionary interactions, and the
central role purposive behaviors play in those interactions. It, first,
makes the case for cultural and cultural structured systems being
considered as true entities bounded in time and space, and not ephemera
in a constant state of becoming another system. Second, it examines how
these entities interact to produce evolutionary culture change. It then
argues that the intent of purposive behaviors is reliably knowable in
the aggregate, at least when dealing with expressions of behavioral
tendencies in the animal kingdom, humans included. Finally, the book
references well documented behavioral tendencies for examples of
proximate causation in the evolution of settled village societies and,
following that, socially complex societies. Through these efforts, the
book synthesizes the various approaches to the evolution of culture and
provides a complete and comprehensive picture of the process. It
provides a corrective to the tendency to view cultural systems as
entirely open ended and as capable of changing in any direction; and
also to treating cultural evolution as solely a result of selective
forces, that is, in terms of only ultimate causation. This book provides
an engaging and critical counterview to established theories of cultural
evolution and is of interest to scholars and students of different
disciplines, from anthropology and archeology, to evolutionary biology
and epigenetics.
