scholarly journals Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Kolodny ◽  
Marcus W. Feldman ◽  
Nicole Creanza
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Cultural Gaps

scholarly journals Variation is the universal: making cultural evolution work in developmental psychology

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Ann Kline ◽  
Rubeena Shamsudheen ◽  
Tanya Broesch
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Geographical Scope ◽  
Cultural Gaps

Culture is a human universal, yet it is a source of variation in human psychology, behaviour and development. Developmental researchers are now expanding the geographical scope of research to include populations beyond relatively wealthy Western communities. However, culture and context still play a secondary role in the theoretical grounding of developmental psychology research, far too often. In this paper, we highlight four false assumptions that are common in psychology, and that detract from the quality of both standard and cross-cultural research in development. These assumptions are: (i) the universality assumption , that empirical uniformity is evidence for universality, while any variation is evidence for culturally derived variation; (ii) the Western centrality assumption , that Western populations represent a normal and/or healthy standard against which development in all societies can be compared; (iii) the deficit assumption , that population-level differences in developmental timing or outcomes are necessarily due to something lacking among non-Western populations; and (iv) the equivalency assumption , that using identical research methods will necessarily produce equivalent and externally valid data, across disparate cultural contexts. For each assumption, we draw on cultural evolutionary theory to critique and replace the assumption with a theoretically grounded approach to culture in development. We support these suggestions with positive examples drawn from research in development. Finally, we conclude with a call for researchers to take reasonable steps towards more fully incorporating culture and context into studies of development, by expanding their participant pools in strategic ways. This will lead to a more inclusive and therefore more accurate description of human development. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Integrative studies of cultural evolution: crossing disciplinary boundaries to produce new insights

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Kolodny ◽  
Marcus W. Feldman ◽  
Nicole Creanza
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Human Genetics ◽  
Evolutionary Genetics ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Population Interactions ◽  
Complex Phenomena ◽  
Cultural Gaps

Culture evolves according to dynamics on multiple temporal scales, from individuals' minute-by-minute behaviour to millennia of cultural accumulation that give rise to population-level differences. These dynamics act on a range of entities—including behavioural sequences, ideas and artefacts as well as individuals, populations and whole species—and involve mechanisms at multiple levels, from neurons in brains to inter-population interactions. Studying such complex phenomena requires an integration of perspectives from a diverse array of fields, as well as bridging gaps between traditionally disparate areas of study. In this article, which also serves as an introduction to the current special issue, we highlight some specific respects in which the study of cultural evolution has benefited and should continue to benefit from an integrative approach. We showcase a number of pioneering studies of cultural evolution that bring together numerous disciplines. These studies illustrate the value of perspectives from different fields for understanding cultural evolution, such as cognitive science and neuroanatomy, behavioural ecology, population dynamics, and evolutionary genetics. They also underscore the importance of understanding cultural processes when interpreting research about human genetics, neuroscience, behaviour and evolution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals High-magnitude innovators as keystone individuals in the evolution of culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170053 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Arbilly
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Keystone Species ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Independent Innovation ◽  
High Magnitude ◽  
Cultural Gaps ◽  
Behavioural Repertoire

Borrowing from the concept of keystone species in ecological food webs, a recent focus in the field of animal behaviour has been keystone individuals: individuals whose impact on population dynamics is disproportionally larger than their frequency in the population. In populations evolving culture, such may be the role of high-magnitude innovators: individuals whose innovations are a major departure from the population's existing behavioural repertoire. Their effect on cultural evolution is twofold: they produce innovations that constitute a ‘cultural leap' and, once copied, their innovations may induce further innovations by conspecifics (socially induced innovations) as they explore the new behaviour themselves. I use computer simulations to study the coevolution of independent innovations, socially induced innovations and innovation magnitude, and show that while socially induced innovation is assumed here to be less costly than independent innovation, it does not readily evolve. When it evolves, it may in some conditions select against independent innovation and lower its frequency, despite it requiring independent innovation in order to operate; at the same time, however, it leads to much faster cultural evolution. These results confirm the role of high-magnitude innovators as keystones, and suggest a novel explanation for the low frequency of independent innovation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution'.

scholarly journals Cultural transmission in an ever-changing world: trial-and-error copying may be more robust than precise imitation

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170050 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noa Truskanov ◽  
Yosef Prat
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Actual Environment ◽  
Cultural Gaps

Cultural transmission facilitates the spread of behaviours within social groups and may lead to the establishment of stable traditions in both human and non-human animals. The fidelity of transmission is frequently emphasized as a core component of cultural evolution and as a prerequisite for cumulative culture. Fidelity is often considered a synonym of precise copying of observed behaviours. However, while precise copying guarantees reliable transmission in an ideal static world, it may be vulnerable to realistic variability in the actual environment. Here, we argue that fidelity may be more naturally achieved when the social learning mechanisms incorporate trial-and-error; and that the robustness of social transmission is thereby increased. We employed a simple model to demonstrate how culture that is produced through exact copying is fragile in an (even slightly) noisy world. When incorporating a certain degree of trial-and-error, however, cultures are more readily formed in a stochastic environment and are less vulnerable to rare ecological changes. We suggest that considering trial-and-error learning as a stabilizing component of social transmission may provide insights into cultural evolution in a realistic, variable, world. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Evolutionary demography of age at last birth: integrating approaches from human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170060 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhan Mattison ◽  
Christina Moya ◽  
Adam Reynolds ◽  
Mary C. Towner
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Reproductive Behaviour ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Synthetic Approach ◽  
Behavioural Ecology ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Kinship Ecologies ◽  
Demographic Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary

Cultural evolutionary theory and human behavioural ecology offer different, but compatible approaches to understanding human demographic behaviour. For much of their 30 history, these approaches have been deployed in parallel, with few explicit attempts to integrate them empirically. In this paper, we test hypotheses drawn from both approaches to explore how reproductive behaviour responds to cultural changes among Mosuo agriculturalists of China. Specifically, we focus on how age at last birth (ALB) varies in association with temporal shifts in fertility policies, spatial variation and kinship ecologies. We interpret temporal declines in ALB as plausibly consistent with demographic front-loading of reproduction in light of fertility constraints and later ages at last birth in matrilineal populations relative to patrilineal ones as consistent with greater household cooperation for reproductive purposes in the former. We find little evidence suggesting specific transmission pathways for the spread of norms regulating ALB, but emphasize that the rapid pace of change strongly suggests that learning processes were involved in the general decline in ALB over time. The different predictions of models we employ belie their considerable overlap and the potential for a synthetic approach to generate more refined tests of evolutionary hypotheses of demographic behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Assessing the relative impact of historical divergence and inter-group transmission on cultural patterns: a method from evolutionary ecology

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel ◽  
Stephen J. Lycett
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Ecology ◽  
Group Interaction ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Northern Coast ◽  
Relative Impact ◽  
Simple Method ◽  
Tree Models ◽  
Cultural Affinity

In the study of cultural evolution, observed among-group affinity patterns reflect the effects of processes such as mutation (e.g. innovation and copying error), between-group interaction (culture flow), drift and selection. As in biology, cultural affinity patterns are often spatially correlated, making it difficult to distinguish between the opposing geographically mediated forces of divergence and interaction, which cause groups to become more distinct or similar over time, respectively. Analogous difficulties are faced by evolutionary biologists examining the relationship between biological affinity and geography, particularly at lower taxonomic levels where the potential for gene flow between lineages is greatest. Tree models are generally used to assess the fit between affinity patterns and models of historical divergence. However, factors driving lineage divergence are often spatially mediated, resulting in tree models that are themselves geographically structured. Here, we showcase a simple method drawn from evolutionary ecology for assessing the relative impact of both geographically mediated processes simultaneously. We illustrate the method using global human craniometric diversity and material culture from the northern coast of New Guinea as example case studies. This method can be employed to quantify the relative importance of history (divergence) and geographically mediated between-group interaction (culture flow) in explaining observed cultural affinity patterns. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Enquire within: cultural evolution and cognitive science

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170051 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Heyes
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Cultural Selection ◽  
Cultural Domain

Cultural evolution and cognitive science need each other. Cultural evolution needs cognitive science to find out whether the conditions necessary for Darwinian evolution are met in the cultural domain. Cognitive science needs cultural evolution to explain the origins of distinctively human cognitive processes. Focusing on the first question, I argue that cultural evolutionists can get empirical traction on third-way cultural selection by rooting the distinction between replication and reconstruction, two modes of cultural inheritance, in the distinction between System 1 and System 2 cognitive processes. This move suggests that cultural epidemiologists are right in thinking that replication has higher fidelity than reconstruction, and replication processes are not genetic adaptations for culture, but wrong to assume that replication is rare. If replication is not rare, an important requirement for third-way cultural selection, one-shot fidelity , is likely to be met. However, there are other requirements, overlooked by dual-inheritance theorists when they conflate strong (Darwinian) and weak (choice) senses of ‘cultural selection’, including dumb choices and recurrent fidelity . In a second excursion into cognitive science, I argue that these requirements can be met by metacognitive social learning strategies , and trace the origins of these distinctively human cognitive processes to cultural evolution. Like other forms of cultural learning, they are not cognitive instincts but cognitive gadgets. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Using features of a Creole language to reconstruct population history and cultural evolution: tracing the English origins of Sranan

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170055 ◽  
Author(s):  
André C. Sherriah ◽  
Hubert Devonish ◽  
Ewart A. C. Thomas ◽  
Nicole Creanza
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Population History ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Dominant Group ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Regional Dialect ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
Creole Languages

Creole languages are formed in conditions where speakers from distinct languages are brought together without a shared first language, typically under the domination of speakers from one of the languages and particularly in the context of the transatlantic slave trade and European colonialism. One such Creole in Suriname, Sranan, developed around the mid-seventeenth century, primarily out of contact between varieties of English from England, spoken by the dominant group, and multiple West African languages. The vast majority of the basic words in Sranan come from the language of the dominant group, English. Here, we compare linguistic features of modern-day Sranan with those of English as spoken in 313 localities across England. By way of testing proposed hypotheses for the origin of English words in Sranan, we find that 80% of the studied features of Sranan can be explained by similarity to regional dialect features at two distinct input locations within England, a cluster of locations near the port of Bristol and another cluster near Essex in eastern England. Our new hypothesis is supported by the geographical distribution of specific regional dialect features, such as post-vocalic rhoticity and word-initial ‘h’, and by phylogenetic analysis of these features, which shows evidence favouring input from at least two English dialects in the formation of Sranan. In addition to explicating the dialect features most prominent in the linguistic evolution of Sranan, our historical analyses also provide supporting evidence for two distinct hypotheses about the likely geographical origins of the English speakers whose language was an input to Sranan. The emergence as a likely input to Sranan of the speech forms of a cluster near Bristol is consistent with historical records, indicating that most of the indentured servants going to the Americas between 1654 and 1666 were from Bristol and nearby counties, and that of the cluster near Essex is consistent with documents showing that many of the governors and important planters came from the southeast of England (including London) (Smith 1987 The Genesis of the Creole Languages of Surinam ; Smith 2009 In The handbook of pidgin and creole studies , pp. 98–129). This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Generative inference for cultural evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170056 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kandler ◽  
Adam Powell
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Frequency Distributions

One of the major challenges in cultural evolution is to understand why and how various forms of social learning are used in human populations, both now and in the past. To date, much of the theoretical work on social learning has been done in isolation of data, and consequently many insights focus on revealing the learning processes or the distributions of cultural variants that are expected to have evolved in human populations. In population genetics, recent methodological advances have allowed a greater understanding of the explicit demographic and/or selection mechanisms that underlie observed allele frequency distributions across the globe, and their change through time. In particular, generative frameworks—often using coalescent-based simulation coupled with approximate Bayesian computation (ABC)—have provided robust inferences on the human past, with no reliance on a priori assumptions of equilibrium. Here, we demonstrate the applicability and utility of generative inference approaches to the field of cultural evolution. The framework advocated here uses observed population-level frequency data directly to establish the likely presence or absence of particular hypothesized learning strategies. In this context, we discuss the problem of equifinality and argue that, in the light of sparse cultural data and the multiplicity of possible social learning processes, the exclusion of those processes inconsistent with the observed data might be the most instructive outcome. Finally, we summarize the findings of generative inference approaches applied to a number of case studies. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals On the absence of a correlation between population size and ‘toolkit size' in ethnographic hunter–gatherers

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1743) ◽  
pp. 20170061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenichi Aoki
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Variable Population ◽  
Cultural Gaps

In apparent contradiction to the theoretically predicted effect of population size on the quality/quantity of material culture, statistical analyses on ethnographic hunter–gatherers have shown an absence of correlation between population size and toolkit size. This has sparked a heated, if sometimes tangential, debate as to the usefulness of the theoretical models and as to what modes of cultural transmission humans are capable of and hunter–gatherers rely on. I review the directly relevant theoretical literature and argue that much of the confusion is caused by a mismatch between the theoretical variable and the empirical observable. I then confirm that a model incorporating the appropriate variable does predict a positive association between population size and toolkit size for random oblique, vertical, best-of- K , conformist, anticonformist, success bias and one-to-many cultural transmission, with the caveat that for all populations sampled, the population size has remained constant and toolkit size has reached the equilibrium for this population size. Finally, I suggest three theoretical scenarios, two of them involving variable population size, that would attenuate or eliminate this association and hence help to explain the empirical absence of correlation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution'.

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