Ecological Niches and Convergent Evolution
While generalists exist, many species of animal have evolved some form or another of environmental specialization. It would be weird if this wasn’t the case—of course the skills needed to thrive in a desert environment are not the same as those needed in a lush rainforest. The same is true for cultivars: While generalist cultivars exist, many are specialized to either one form of environment or one type of ecological niche within a multi-cultural ecosystem.
In this chapter we will explore various ways cultures specialize for specific ecological niches while also putting a special lens on cases of frequent convergent evolution. For example, independently evolved “city cultures” are consistently less likely to see dog ownership as a critical component of childhood and gun ownership for personal defense as a moral mandate. An understanding of cultural convergent evolution can help us model how cultures in the future might sort out when subjected to different environmental conditions that appear to produce consistent outcomes.
Not all of the niches that cultures evolve to fill are totally societal. Sometimes cultures evolve to fill an environmental, ecological niche in which other cultures either can’t survive or can’t compete. Consider the ancient Inuit or Seminole as an example of this.
An interesting phenomenon can occur when the specializations developed under extreme environmental conditions get slightly tweaked, making a culture wildly more competitive than contemporary counterparts. Just as some invasive species spread like wildfire when introduced to new ecosystems that lack tools to defend against them, some cultures spread rapidly once introduced to new ecosystems.
By this, we merely mean that some cultures have exploded onto the world stage very quickly, outcompeting other cultures that had been in stalemates for generations because they had been honed within a unique environment. We don’t use this analogy to imply anything disparaging about these cultures. It should be obvious that authors of a book about how some cultures outcompete others don’t hold more competitive cultures in ill regard. If you choose to imply that we frame some cultures are ”bad” because we described them as capable of spreading like an invasive species, you are intuitionally trying to mislead people.
Three examples of a specialist culture coming out of nowhere to become one of the largest players in world history are:
- The Mongols: A step nomad horse symbiote specialist culture
- Islam: The confluence of a desert nomadic specialist culture and Abrahamic culture[[121]](#_ftn121)
- The Vikings: A culture specialized around agriculture and fishing in extreme, cold-weather environments
Note on what we mean by “horse symbiote” cultural specialization: The Mongol cultivar of the 13th and 14th centuries was not just a steppe nomad culture but a “horse symbiote” culture. While almost all human cultures have symbiotic relationships with one species or another, the Mongols of the 13th and 14th centuries went balls to the wall with theirs. Not only did Mongolian culture specialize in making all sorts of horse-derived foods, such as horse milk, but they specialized in sleeping on moving horses and could even use a technique for drinking horse blood while on the move when a long force march was required. In the same way an animal can evolve to be symbiotic with another animal, a culture sitting on top of human biology can evolve to make humans symbiotic with another animal species. This is an example of a culture evolving to fill an extremist environmental niche.
In each of these cases, a culture that specialized in surviving under extreme environmental conditions shifted from being a non-player in world history to dominating a huge portion of Europe in only a few generations.
This dynamic suggests that cultures may be able to “sharpen” themselves and become more resilient by actively choosing to inhabit harsh and hostile environments—environments that force them to be innovative, strong, and proactive. (As we think about the design of our own family’s culture, we wonder if perhaps we should always ensure a faction of this culture lives in extreme cold weather settlements or inhabits some other difficult-to-live-in place to encourage this sort of cultural strengthening.) Like people, cultures benefit from antifragility.
Alternatively, this phenomenon may be a product of unique elements these cultures evolved—due to their unusual formative environments—coming against cultures that had no natural defenses against these rare strategies.
A related phenomenon can be seen in left-handed people disproportionately excelling in many sports. For example, people learn how to play against right-handed batters, meaning they will always be slightly worse countering a left-handed one. Evolutionary biologists suspect that, at one point, all humans were right-handed due to the evolution of language leading to the corresponding side of our brains becoming dominant. This environment gave left-handed people an advantage in fights, making it a cross-cultural advantage for a stable minority group to exhibit this trait.[[122]](#_ftn122)
It is therefore very worthwhile to consider how an intentionally designed or optimized culture you develop might leverage these dynamics to its advantage. If your pool of initial members already has some form of specialization, how can you use culture to maximize its value and how will that specialization alter your culture’s relations with others? If your members lack a specialization but you see the advantage in creating one, how will you engineer evolutionary pressures that coax it out over generations? Consider these factors as you proceed.