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1.3.19 A Deserted Island Thought Experiment: Creating Culture
Here's a thought experiment about creating culture. Consider what would happen in the following hypothetical situation, proposed by the anthropologist, Robin Fox.
Suppose a population of children were to find itself in total social isolation, perhaps on a deserted island, having to raise themselves, without ever having had any contact with adults and a pre-existing culture. No previous enculturation whatsoever. Impossible in real life, of course, because we humans need others to feed and nurture us for a long time until we become self-sustaining. But this is only a thought experiment—nobody will die of starvation or exposure.
What would happen? Because humans have inborn brain adaptations, including adaptations for language and music, the individuals making up this hypothetical culture-free society would create culture, just as individual humans create culture everywhere in the world. The society would, among other things:
- Generate a language
- Have music
- Have dancing
- Create a legal system
- Create the institution of marriage
- Create systems of social status
- Proclaim and enforce taboos, such as the incest taboo
- Create some sort of religious faith, complete with ceremony and ritual
- Make and use tools and weapons
- Exclude women from various practices and institutions
- Have homosexual citizens
- Find itself inventing ways of coping with adultery, murder, suicide, psychosis, etc.