Old Nature starts me ruminating

I just came across this Nature paper again.

The abstract reads,

"Whole-genome sequence assemblies are now available for seven different animals, including nematode worms, mice and humans. Comparative genome analyses reveal a surprising constancy in genetic content: vertebrate genomes have only about twice the number of genes that invertebrate genomes have, and the increase is primarily due to the duplication of existing genes rather than the invention of new ones. How, then, has evolutionary diversity arisen? Emerging evidence suggests that organismal complexity arises from progressively more elaborate regulation of gene expression."

Hmmm...
Started me thinking along cultural evolution, and the bases for societal complexity. So extrapolating (which is dangerous and probably will result in wrong conclusion but...) , the extant society seems greatly diverged in their cultural complexity, (analogy to invertebrate and vertebrate) yet the number of behavioral responses (number of "genes") we use do not seem to be that much more than our nearest cousins, the chimpanzees (invertebrate society!). So our societal complexity might arise "from progressively more elaborate regulation" of our behavioral response and not from "inventions of new ones".

hmmm... stating the obvious aren't I?
The diversity of human society today stems not from inventing new ways to interact with each other, but rather just more elaborate ways to self regulate primative behavior.

There's gotta be some graduate student, somewhere, looking at this question.
Behavior is base upon biology. But behavior can evolve more rapidly than biology in the context of cultural selection. So can we begin to get the reverse?!

Nature has selected our biology, which until recently, has determine our behaviorial response (still relatively primative). Yet if culture begins to be dominant in selecting our behavior, will this in time alter our biology? If so, what's the time scale? Can we accelerate the biological change by "inventing" new behavior and not just increasing the complexity of regulating old, "primative" behavior? My answers... yes, a few short millenniums, yes.

For those interested in the original paper:
Levine & Tjian (2003) Nature, Vol 424, p. 147-151