Culture Power

Humans covered the planet 300 times faster than possible from genetic evolution alone

- Cody Cottier

Humans have adapted to survive extreme heat, cold and everything in between.

JUST UNDER 300,000 YEARS from the moment Homo sapiens appeared in Africa, the species had encircled Earth, mastering desolate deserts and frozen wastelands and all the temperate climes in between.

Throughout this staggering expansion, we seem to have relied surprisingly little on genetic adaptation to fuel our globe-conquering—all eight billion of us together remain less genetically diverse than individual populations of chimpanzees. So how did we do it?

Many scientists point to cultural evolution, the process by which knowledge, customs and technology spread over time. But according to Alex Mesoudi, who studies cultural evolution at the University of Exeter in England, “it’s always been just a vague claim.”

No longer. A recent paper in the