(1) An anatomical trait believed once to have been an adaptation to an environment, but no longer adaptive because the environment has changed.
(2) A cultural trait considered to be a survival of an earlier practice, but with no remembered meaning and no functional significance.
Comment:Biological vestiges that have no particular disadvantage may be retained for many generations, although sometimes exhibiting the effects of irrelevant genetic mutations. In some cases a vestige may later come to be pre-adaptive to a new environmental situation.
The use of the term in cultural or social contexts is considerably more problematic (and discredited), since it provides no explanation for people's motivation to continue it. Marxist theorists sometimes continue to explain behavior that seems incompatible with modern life as being "vestiges," despite the intellectual flabbiness of the concept.
In archaeological practice, a "vestige" is merely an incomplete physical fragment of something, or direct physical evidence of its former presence.A vestige in language refers to any older feature largely displaced in contemporary usage.
Definition Revised: 2009-03-10
Script Last Modified: 2025-02-04
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