For some 3 billion years the entire message of inheritance was carried along on the back of DNA alone.
Then, gradually, a new vector of inheritance began to develop, gradually overtaking the slower and more clumsy adaptation-by-generation DNA.
Through a very slow and gradual process, gene expression changes to suit the environment a beast finds itself in. Those less well adapted perish without breeding and those best suited breed freely. A knowledge base of adaptation is carried forward in our DNA. Considerably more adaptation tricks reside in our DNA than are actually expressed - the genes for teeth, hair and scales reside in the chicken’s genome for instance.
But DNA is a very slow and approximate method of adaptation. Lamarck thought that the experience of animals during their life time must be somehow passed on to their offspring. While not rejecting this notion (even mentions it favourably in "The Descent of Man"), Darwin thought that ‘natural selection’ was the more likely means of adaptation.
It seems a bit pointless for us to achieve so much in our lifetimes and yet none of it is passed on to our children.
But DNA has long since fallen out of favour as a means of passing on such information. It determines almost no behaviour in humans, and IF it does then this predisposition is either vague, general/non-specific or rare.
In the process of evolution, the brain, formerly an interface between the genetic predisposition and the environment, began to develop an ability to learn from and teach to others. Chimpanzees are capable of passing on a few simple tool utilisation tricks to their offspring. Of greater interest is the complex social system that chimpanzees must learn in its entirety from other chimpanzees (monkey see - monkey do, chimps seem to learn but don't actively teach).
From around that time a dramatic change occurred in the process of inheritance - those behaviours exclusively passed on by DNA were taken over by the emerging consciousness that individuals and tribes developed.
Claws, large canine teeth and fur, all genetically determined were taken over by consciously learnt skills. There is no gene for the stone tool. It was the loss of genetic predisposition and the gradual devolving of the genetic machinery that allowed consciousness to take over.
Eugenicists of early last century noted the primitive behaviour of people who had skin and other body features different to their own. The reality of their valid though bigoted observations was quite different to what one would expect. Differences between races have nothing to do with genetic predisposition. There is a greater genetic diversity within any racial group than between racial groups.
The emerging shared consciousness took a coherent body - the differences were largely due to tribal group’s self selection.
What would you have if you merged a books on acceptable adult behaviour, history of your people, methods of finding and preparing food, the correct rituals and dances to perform and at what time to perform them, medicine and the treatment of injuries and disease, and you made this book in a non-paper form that could be reliably remembered and passed on for generations, and you made it accessible to different people for different reasons - the child’s first reader, the old man’s book of wisdom, the young man’s adventure story and so on and on and on?
You’d have the tribal peoples sacred stories. No wonder westerners fail to understand their significance, there meaning, and the reason why it is important for people to keep them alive.
The Dream Time story of the Australian Aboriginal reminds me of the nearest to pure expression of non-genetic inheritance as one can get. The story, say of Kapali (Old Possum Man) tells of a man that turned into a possum. The story is fairly simple, but is it a myth? The behaviour of tribal members and the correct treatment of them is given by the behaviour of the old possum man. The behaviour of the possum is also given in the same story. Man’s place in nature, the possum as food, and hunting techniques can also be interwoven in such a story. If you were to completely pick apart this story into each different ‘book of learning’ you would end up with an encyclopaedic work (in scope).
There are more than one story to the tribal genome. The Australian Aboriginals talk of "song lines" which told of the paths through the deserts (tribes follow song lines.)
Over the last century we have taken over the genetic dominance that determined one’s ability to remember, to think, to express, to communicate and so on. The computer has replaced them - DNA does not code for computers, it codes for the brain. Providing your brain falls within a very wide tolerance, then you can have a memory like the best in history or an ability to calculate numbers unsurpassed in a DNA-only human.
Consciousness is the new Evolution. We can take inheritance from any source, not just our parents (DNA) not just the tribe or culture, but universally. The expression of this inheritance requires consciousness (just as RNA and ribosome make proteins and enzymes, via consciousness we code for thoughts).
If we consider only the isolated individual and wonder about their consciousness then we come up with a paradox. Humans do much better without higher consciousness - they breed faster, require fewer resources and so on. But if we consider consciousness as a way station for the inheritance that was carried on the backs of our DNA for more than three billion years, then the utility of consciousness is obvious and needs no further explaining.
The rate of evolutionary adaptation has accelerated enormously over the past hundred years - to what end? What environment is all this adaptation preparing us for, or just what is the environment to which we are adapting?
Kind Regards, Robert Karl Stonjek.
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© Robert Karl Stonjek 2003