Page 466 - Cultures and Organizations

12

The Evolution of Cultures

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a
slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other
men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men
and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense
advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who,
from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fi delity, obedience,
courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifi ce
themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes;
and this would be natural selection.

—Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1874

he recent discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores of Homo flo-

Tresiensis fossils, nicknamed “hobbits,” has caused quite a stir. Homo
erectus, to whose lineage the fossils belong, was believed to have been

extinct for a million years, but these fossils are about eighteen thousand
years old, and today’s inhabitants of Flores still recount legends of “for-

431