Maladaptive variants - Maladaptive variants But not all...

Maladaptive variants:
But not all cultural variants are adaptive: debilitating drug abuse, religious celibacy,
voluntary martyrdom for political causes, etc. are examples of persistent features of
many cultures that seem likely to be maladaptive for the individuals who adopt them
Darwinian theory of cultural evolution predicts maladaptive cultural traits are more likely
to occur or persist when:
1) cultural transmission is non-parental (hence not contingently linked to biological
reproduction), and/or
2) there is some conflict or trade-off between maximizing one's reproductive success
and maximizing one's cultural influence
One possible set of examples is certain religiously-specified dietary taboos: many of
these exist, and some (e.g., the "sacred cow" beliefs of Hindus, the Jewish and Muslim
taboo on eating pork) have been the subject of major debates in ecological
anthropology
A not-so-famous food taboo is traditional rules among Inuit (Canadian Eskimos)