Culture Now Drives Human Evolution

A new synthesis by Timothy Waring and Zachary Wood argues that cultural practices spread and self‑correct far faster than genes, so human adaptation today is primarily cultural, not genetic. Digital systems accelerate this by rapidly selecting and diffusing useful behaviors and technologies, often at group scale. The claim flips the usual nature‑first lens in evolutionary talk. — If culture is the main engine of human evolution now, debates about education, governance, technology, and inequality should focus on designing better cultural selection mechanisms rather than expecting biology to solve social problems.