Survival of the Fittest

Survival of the Fittest
Survival of the fittest, meaning not the strongest but those best suited to a particular environment. This leads to the third point in Darwin’s scheme.

Those individuals whose variations enable them to survive at a higher rate will pass on their traits to a larger proportion of the next generation through the process of inheritance. Thus from one generation to the next the population will change in response to changes in the environment. This is the process by which evolution takes place. It operates on the level of the population, not the individual and it entails the selection of traits and changes in the distribution of those traits in a population over time. It has nothing to do with a plant or animal’s becoming “better” or “higher”. It means becoming better adapted to a particular set of conditions, that is, better able to survive.

You might ask what place Darwin’s theory of biological evolution has in the study of cultural anthropology. The importance lies in the answer to the question: Why do we look the way we do? We might just as well have asked why we behave the way we do. The concept that provides the answer to these questions is natural selection. For million of years there were no humans on earth and there was no such thing as culture. Darwin helps us understand why culture evolved and why our physical appearance and biological make-up are the way they are.

We can assume that the early ancestor of human beings were engaged in a struggle to get a living from their environment, just as all forms of life have been since the beginning of time. In some setting this was fairly easy and there was little pressure to change. In other settings, perhaps as a result of population growth or a change of environment, there was a greater competition for a limited supply of food.
Survival of the Fittest