Is culture alive?

From Mozart to Madonna, dim sum to doughnuts, Shakespeare to Sartre – not all forms of life need DNA On Mount Athos, in northern Greece, a monk rises before dawn to sing the same office that has been sung on that mountain for more than 1,000 years. He learned it from older monks who came before him, who learned it in turn in an unbroken chain stretching back to Athanasios the Athonite, in AD963.

Over the centuries, individual monks have come and gone, and yet their chants, prayers, oaths, costumes and ceremonies endure. This persistence is remarkable and revealing: cultural traditions endure because they share a fundamental property with biological organisms. They are alive.

Not metaphorically, but literally. Continue reading...