Memes are ideas, behaviors, or styles that spread from person to person within a culture. In a way they signify the evolution of culture. Genes transmit biological information, whereas memes transmit ideas, and information about belief. The meme is a unit for carrying out cultural ideas which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other phenomena. Memes are the cultural analogues to genes because the self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
Memes can be selected for over many years through religion and ritual: