History & Concepts

Exaptation—surviving for the wrong reasons#

Last tended 2026-07-28

One might be excused for marveling, in these present, technologically-advanced, analysis-laden times, how humanity's well-being could be imperilled stemming from the dubious agendas of a few heads of state. Moreover, how do such states or power models persist and, in many cases, generate advances when so often in the grip of such leaders? If we are indeed on an arc of progress, then it is an arc whose improvements are wrought in no small part by contingency, accident, and hit-or-miss human agency. Which brings me to the concept of 'exaptation.'

In evolutionary biology, an exaptation is a trait that evolved for one purpose but was later co-opted for a completely different function (like feathers evolving for warmth long before they were used for flight).

Human power structures are loaded with exaptations. A religious or administrative apparatus designed for ritual cohesion in 1000 BCE (yes, I'm talking Pharaonic Egypt) might contain a bureaucratic quirk that accidentally makes it incredibly effective at collecting grain taxes during a drought 300 years later.

Did the power structure "adapt" to collect grain taxes? No—it stumbled into a trait that became suprisingly beneficial long after its creation. Critics argue that treating history as a series of "fitness selections" gives human institutions too much credit for internal design or systemic adaptation when much of it stems simply from random structural drift.

Let's survey a few more examples of exaptation stemming from measures targeting "ritual/social cohesion" being co-opted into a raw survival or extraction mechanism:

  • Mesopotamian ziggurats & temple cities: early Sumerian temples (Egal/Ekur) began as places to feed the gods, but quickly evolved into the primary redistributive hubs for irrigation management, trade contracts, and debt-bondage ledger recording.

  • The medieval Catholic Church: started as a spiritual, monastic, and communal movement, but its administrative network (parishes, tithes, written record-keeping, and Latin literacy) made it the only surviving mechanism capable of running diplomacy, land titling, and state administration in the shambles of post-Roman Europe.

  • The Inca Mita system: the Inca framework centered around Ayni (sacred reciprocity) and ritual labor owed to the Sapa Inca (who was seen as divine). This religious obligation was structurally co-opted into a massive labor-tax engine that built thousands of miles of roads, mountain terraces, and fortress networks without ever using money.

Evolution without teleology#

Modern systems theorists and quantitative historians agree on little, but they meet halfway on the concept of Differential Persistence:

You don't need to believe human history has a purpose, nor do you need to ignore human agency, to acknowledge a basic law of political physics: institutional models that cannot extract energy, maintain internal cohesion, and defend their borders are eliminated by those that can.


The "fitness factor" is hard to dispute because power structures do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in an arena of finite resources and competing interests. Even if a model's survival is 80% luck and 20% internal design, that 20% still exerts a non-random direction on human history over long enough spans of time. And there, such as it is, lies our humble 'arc of progress.'

Here's hoping for some exaptation whose unforeseen outcome gives the arc a notable burst forward.

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