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A key insight or dreconceptualization
mechanizm urban graveyard trap

You see a Key Concept, one of the most important principles according to which the world in general and the world of people operate.

These concepts are referenced throughout the Patterns series, including the Patterns for Victory series and Us or Them!. A concise summary and two or three key examples are provided at the beginning of each volume. See other key reconceptualizations.

A key concept in a book of the series „Patterns”

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The urban graveyard trap

During parallel cultural and genetic evolution, changes point in the same direction. But this can only happen when the acquisition of specific traits increases fitness, meaning it leads to economic success and increases the reproductive (survival) chances of individuals operating as part of a given community.

Unfortunately, a phenomenon known as the "urban graveyard trap" stands in the way of such cultural-genetic selection. The mechanism of this evolutionary trap is that the populations of historical cities and towns grew solely thanks to a constant influx of economic migrants from rural areas. In some cases, this phenomenon was so strong that 30% of residents were born outside their center of residence. Figuratively speaking, to grow by 10%, an urban center needed at least twice as many migrants.

Researchers on this topic also point to another mechanism inhibiting cultural evolution, particularly strong in Europe. The point is to eliminate adaptations to the achievements of cultural evolution in Europe: individualism (in the sense of functioning outside clan structures), anonymous social interactions between strangers, etc. The phenomenon of negative selection was extremely strong in places of the most intense cultural evolution – in celibate monastic orders. Because those who lived in such societies could not have legitimate children, the transmission of both genes and cultural programming from one generation to the next was limited or eliminated.

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