Culture Influencing Biology
Culture is a term mainly used to refer to multiple facets that extend the physical facts of human beings mostly utilized by anthropologists among other social scientists. Culture is determined by the beliefs, religion, race, and geography that enable the certain behavior. Human evolution affected by different changes in their history helped in enabling the different cultural practices that are used to differentiate people due to their beliefs and activities. History indicates that habits, rituals, and other factors of people resulted in culture. Biology, on the other hand, focuses on the physical components of the people, which would lead to the question, how the two interrelate. The common assumption would be through marriage that leads to passing of genes to new offspring but there other complex relationship that this paper intends to discuss.
According to Ferraro, & Andreatta, 2017, culture, variously affects human biology from our physical body manipulations to our digestion processes. The authors claim that the description of beauty depending on the cultural background of a person leads to different manipulations of their body parts for instance, by putting bones in their noses, men from New Guinea thinks that the bones makes them more attractive to women. These men put their bodies in much pain to satisfy their cultural beliefs thus affecting their biology (Ferraro, & Andreatta, 2017). The most interesting example provided by authors is the cultural belief that rattlesnake’s meat should not be eaten causing people to vomit after the host reveals that they were eating rattlesnake meat rather than chicken as most of them imagined.
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The authors state that the vomiting of what was a delicious meal means that culture affects even our digestion process. The example is important in demonstrating that cultural beliefs influence our biology in ways we cannot imagine. The authors’ perception is spot on as the people during dinner stated how delicious the meal was leaving to the question why they vomited after learning what they had eaten. If there were no belief that eating rattlesnake’s meat was wrong, they would not have vomited. The example illustrates the behavior humans have developed that have no other explanations rather than their beliefs.
There are few articles or news showing the impacts of culture on biology or vice versa, but the article by Kershaw, 2005 pertaining the Makah calls for the government to exempt them from the provisions forbidding their whaling culture enables viewing the issue in a different perspective. The author indicates that the community participated in whaling and was exempted from the provisions before the under their 1855 treaty that allowed kill up to 20 gray whales in any five-year-period (Kershaw, 2005). These activities performed as rituals or economic generating activities by the tribe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The cultural activities demonstrate that they would reduce the gray whales by 20 in such a period, which would not greatly affect the gray whales’ population.
The author shows that different cultures, agencies, and regulations forbidding their cultural practices have not limited the cultural association of the Makah as a whaling community. Although, before the 1999 hunt that was allowed, the last successful hunt was seventy years before leading to the association being passed from generations to generations as tales (Kershaw, 2005). The joy in 1999 even for the children who had never tasted whale’s meat, demonstrate the power culture has over our biology. The children grow up knowing they are from a whaling community although they only know it through tales. Commercial whaling is another depiction of ways biology influences culture. The increment of commercial whaling mainly of gray whales led to laws and regulations forbidding whaling. The gray whale population was decreasing at an increasing rate resulting in risks of extinction. The decline of whales is a biological demonstration, and it affected Makah’s cultural practices.
References
Ferraro, G. P., & Andreatta, S., (2017). Cultural anthropology: An applied perspective . Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Kershaw, S. (2005, September 19). In Petition to Government, Tribe Hopes for Return to Whaling Past. Nytimes.com . Retrieved 31 August 2017, from, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/us/in-petition-to-government-tribe-hopes-for-return-to-whaling-past.html?mcubz=0
