🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1824@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>A good guide to what is innate
>in humans is to look for behavior that exists in all cultures,
>even as remote as that of Australian aborigines.  Laughing, smiling,
>speech, fighting and sexual behaviors, all are found in all
>genetic stocks.

A good guide, yes; an absolute guide, no.  At some point there was only
one social grouping of humans, and all others derived from it.  Some
quite non-innate behaviors from that grouping may well have survived to
the present day in all existing social groups.  For any particular
universal behavior, there's no way to say beyond reasonable doubt that
the behavior is innate rather than learned.  If one takes a set of such
universals, as Gordon has done, the chances are that almost all of them
are innate, but it would not be surprising if superior research methods
in the future showed one or more to be extremely widespread customs
instead.  Nature vs. nurture is simply not answerable beyond reasonable
doubt with respect to most behaviors of non-infant humans.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim
"Those who restrain desire, so so because theirs is weak enough to be
 restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the
 unwilling." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"