How Pandemic and Disaster Shape Cultural Behaviour

photo by Crawford Jolly

No, we never met the dinosaurs. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and Dinosaurs began dying out 200 – 60 million years ago, homo sapiens evolved out of Africa about 300.000 years ago (Smithsonian, 2020). Research tells us that after already having developed a large population mankind almost went extinct and was again down to about 500 fertile couples 74000 years ago due to a giant volcano outbreak in Indonesia (Max Plank Institute, 2020).

photo by @yoshginsu

Meanwhile small groups of people had already began migrating to different regions of the world and some of those groups had survived in small numbers. All of them developed different coping strategies which changed their social and cultural behaviour in independent ways and also altered their physiognomy accordingly, as for example the melanin in their skin (Hare, 2017). Higher melanin levels lead to darker skin appearance and protect from UV rays of the sun, while lower melanin levels make it possible to absorb Vitamin D in regions with less impact of sunlight (Brenner & Hearing, 2009). Social and cultural behaviour have changed regionally independent as well and while some strategies have developed in similar ways, different groups have also found a diverse range of cultural and social traits. For example, some cultures seem to be focused on managing a crisis, once it evolves, while others try to avoid the crisis in the first place (Thibault, 2019).

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Famously, anthropologist Margaret Meads once exclaimed that the first sign of human civilisation was the find of a mended thighbone, which indicated that the person was not left alone to die, but was cared for by others until the bone had healed (Byok, 2012). It is not actually the fittest who survived, but those who were most able to adapt and change and develop social and cultural skills (Hare, 2017). Much of the different development is down to whether a culture tried to live with nature, or rather tried to control it. Milestones in human development have been the beginning of plant and animal farming about 20000 years ago and in the following the settling down, claiming landownership and the development of urbanity about 10000 years ago (Khan Academy, 2017).

Photo by Jeison Spaniol

Around the same time the different human groups also developed more effective ways of transportation, as for example ships and now the newly developed different cultures and physiognomic different types of homo sapiens came into touch with each other once again, eventually leading to race theories and hostilities.

Virus outbreaks, natural disaster and wars have challenged mankind collectively and independently over and again. Traces of how people have responded to those and the lessons learned can be found in religious books, which often give personal, spiritual, nutritional and social hygiene instructions as well as in social and cultural behaviour. Many of the religious books contain advice to what food to avoid, when and how to wash or for example to avoid inbreeding, how to respect nature and to maintain health. For example, Middle Eastern cultures have developed soap and emphasised the importance of washing the body and hands with water, Europeans the use of clean underwear and African Ubuntu culture to live in sync with nature, not to forget Turkish steam baths and Finnish sauna (Hickman, 2020).

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True, it is well known how the Spanish colonisers brought disease to the Americas, which led to genocide on the indigenous population (Witchals, 2019). However, disaster, specifically in connection with the spread of disease has often also been blamed with no actual reason on other cultures for not following the same strategies.

This happened during the outbreak the pestilence in medieval times (Rubin, 2020), which was often blamed on Jewish people and travellers, of HIV, which was blamed on homosexual people and recently during the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus, which seems to have led to everybody blaming everyone. Maybe this is due to the new global situation with increased interconnection and the spread of a single dominant culture. While in this case there might be one single superior way to cope with the global challenge, we should not forget that it is both the biodiversity as well as the diversity of cultures which provide us with a variety of survival strategies and ways to avoid crisis (Pospisi, 2020).

We need to protect diversity on the planet in order to survive and to learn from each other respectfully to all benefit from the different strategies different cultures have developed over 70000 years in different parts of the earth.