It’s all in the genes … except when it isn’t

An article in Science magazine, May 24th 2013, by Simon Fisher and Matt Ridley, Culture, Genes and Human Revolution – see http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2013/article/are-human-evolut… … which argues that some evolutionary changes in humans may be as a consequence of cultural evolution rather than the other way round. The idea that over the last 200,000 years biological change was due to genetic mutation may be the wrong way of looking at things. Are evolutionary changes in our genome a source or a consequence of cultural innovation? For example, the impact of fire and cooking on the human gut, the emergence of language, lactose tolerance, and any number of things. What might this imply for the Out of Africa theory and its need to have at the core a pristince human origin untarnished by not breeding with lesser forms of humanity.