Why so different?

Discover Dialogue: Evolutionary Biologist Mark Pagel

"We have the capacity to scramble up all the cultures every generation. We can all interbreed, and we can all eat the same food. So there’s no reason why we should maintain all this separation. Yet we do. What is fascinating about human cultures is that despite every opportunity for us to be swamped by the cultures around us, somehow the cultures are quite strong, as if deflecting the cultures around them."

Not one for sociobiology or assembly rules for cultural interaction, interviews like this usually just pass right by me, but Pagel and anthropologist Ruth Mace make some interesting points about difference. Plus, the idea of cultural deflector shields makes me giggle.