The idea that culture is made up of elements is nothing new. We will not review the entire long history of such research here, but will focus on memetics. In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins hypothesized a unit of cultural transmission that he called a meme: “We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (Dawkins 1976, p. 206). Dawkins introduced the concept of a meme by analogy with a gene.

Genes do not divide or mix, they are particles. At the same time they appear on the surface as continuous phenotypic traits: a person’s height or skin color can take on any value within a certain interval. Dawkins raised the question of whether memes are particulate (Dawkins 1976, p. 209; Mesoudi 2011, pp. 41-2). According to Alex Mesoudi, units of cultural heredity are not particulate, unlike genes:

“Memetics makes the neo-Darwinian assumption that culture can be divided into discrete units that are inherited in a particulate fashion, like genes. It also assumes that memes are transmitted with high fidelity, this being one of the defining characteristics of a replicator according to Dawkins. However, whereas genetic inheritance is particulate, cultural inheritance in many cases appears to be nonparticulate” (Mesoudi 2011, p. 42).

In reality, meanings have the properties of both a discrete and a continuous set. The discreteness of meaning is reflected in the fact that a single meaning can be isolated and defined. The continuity of meaning is reflected in the fact that meanings exist only in their movement: unlike a meme, meaning does not exist separately from human society, like a “cultural gene” that may or may not be transmitted between humans. Meanings are not “cultural genes” but human actions and their results, the totality of their material, social and abstract aspects.

Meaning is not an analogue of a gene, since it does not come from another meaning or even from a discrete set of meanings, but from their continuous set, which in the process of transmission and elaboration forms a culture. In essence, Culture represents a single Meaning that is both an inherited and an acquired property. While new genes can only arise from existing genes, new meanings—counterfacts—arise from the interaction of the subject and his culture with the natural and cultural environment: counterfacts arise from a set of meanings and non-meanings. Counterfacts come not only from variations in cultural traditions transmitted through learning, but also from an intellect solving problems in a changing environment. In other words, meaning as the substance and determinateness of culture depends on man as its subject and direction:

“Ideas and items of technology also have no stable analogue to the genome, or germline, because different elements within cycles of technological reproduction, including ideas, behaviors of artisans, and material elements of technologies themselves, can all temporarily acquire the status of replicators depending on the attention that human agents happen to be paying to them. Accidental variations in one’s mental plan for constructing a pot, or in one’s actions in producing the pot, or in the made pot itself, can all conceivably be reproduced when another artisan comes to make a resembling item” (Lewens 2018).

Biologists studying a minimum genome that would allow organisms to exist and reproduce assume that such a genome consists of 256 active genes (Hutchison et al. 2016). In nature, the bacterium mycoplasma genitalium has the smallest known genome among self-reproducing organisms—525 genes. The human genome contains 20,000 to 25,000 active genes. To date, there is no research on the minimum set of meanings that would trigger cultural evolution. Human culture began with a scanty set of primitive meanings, perhaps with a few simple tools, causal mini-models and an elementary tongue. However, by the time when Otzi lived 5,300 years ago—a man from the Copper Age whose mummy and personal effects were discovered in the Alps in 1991— the meanings had multiplied to the point that a multi-story museum building is required to store and research them. And modern human culture is an immense accumulation of meanings that would require an encyclopedia of thousands of volumes to describe.

The accumulation of meanings begins when proto-humans transform their habitat into a means and adapt it to their needs. The accumulation of meanings, in turn, leads to the unfolding of needs (Korotaev 2003, pp. 32-3). The unfolding of needs implies, first, that animal needs become more cultural and, second, that new more cultural needs emerge. Above, we called this transition the “needs trap” with which human history began. “…The satisfaction of the first need, the action of satisfying and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired, leads to new needs; and this creation of new needs is the first historical act” (Marx and Engels 1975-2004, vol. 5, p. 42). In this transition, not only animals but also their needs are transformed into a mixture of life and meaning.

The unfolding of needs initially takes place within the framework of cultural selection. As humans advanced from cultural selection to choice, the satisfaction of needs unfolded into a meaningful process of consumption, that is, an increasingly targeted appropriation and elaboration of the material of nature. Traditional/simple consumption is based on the gradual expansion of the domus, the cultural niche of humans within the natural environment. Primitive people are still firmly embedded in nature and follow its rhythms: