ABSTRACT
Human mind is human to the extent that it enables and is enabled by culture. Despite some evidence for the existence of culturelike practices among primates, the complexity and significance of culture for Homo sapiens far exceed those of other species on Earth. At the core of culture is symbolic meaning. Evolutionary processes made it possible for human minds to use symbols to refer to what we regard as things and events in the world and to humans themselves. Human mind, however, is incomplete in and of itself; it presupposes input from culture. Whatever is the mind physically realized at this point in time is a result of the evolutionary, sociohistorical, and ontogenetic processes. Whatever will be a kind of mind humanity will have in the future also must be a result of the symbolic activities from this point onward. At the same time, the past symbolic activities have produced contemporary cultures around the world, and the current symbolic activities will produce cultures of the future. In this sense, the mutual constitution of culture and mind unfolds over time, never ceasing, extending from the past and continuing into the future. Cultural dynamics is no less than the totality of this symbolically mediated culture-mind interplay.
