 All the objections to the gene-meme analogy to one side, Dawkins (1976: 211) finds the chief difference between genetic and memetic change is that biological evolution is at bottom a war between alleles residing at the same locus: “Memes seem to have nothing equivalent to chromosomes and nothing equivalent to alleles”. First, the usual depiction of alleles residing at the same locus on homologous chromosomes so central to Mendelian genetics is an oversimplification; but, and more importantly, for at least half of the history of life on earth, replication and selection took place in the absence of chromosomes, meiosis, and the like. If gene-based biological evolution took place for so long in the absence of the Mendelian apparatus and still does so in many extant organisms, then demanding that memetic evolution proceeds by this very special and possibly aberrant sort of inheritance seems too strong. The cost of meiosis remains a serious problem in ordinary biological evolution. Demanding that cultural evolution incorporates this same highly problematic element in its own makeup seems strange in the extreme. If we are to develop a general analysis of selection, we must distinguish between essential and contingent features of this process.