scholarly journals Hunter-gatherer multilevel sociality accelerates cumulative cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
pp. eaax5913 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea B. Migliano ◽  
Federico Battiston ◽  
Sylvain Viguier ◽  
Abigail E. Page ◽  
Mark Dyble ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
Sensing Technology ◽  
Cultural Differentiation ◽  
Universal Feature ◽  
Functional Relevance ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Although multilevel sociality is a universal feature of human social organization, its functional relevance remains unclear. Here, we investigated the effect of multilevel sociality on cumulative cultural evolution by using wireless sensing technology to map inter- and intraband social networks among Agta hunter-gatherers. By simulating the accumulation of cultural innovations over the real Agta multicamp networks, we demonstrate that multilevel sociality accelerates cultural differentiation and cumulative cultural evolution. Our results suggest that hunter-gatherer social structures [based on (i) clustering of families within camps and camps within regions, (ii) cultural transmission within kinship networks, and (iii) high intercamp mobility] may have allowed past and present hunter-gatherers to maintain cumulative cultural adaptation despite low population density, a feature that may have been critical in facilitating the global expansion of Homo sapiens.

scholarly journals Language As a Memory Carrier Of Perceptually-Based Knowledge. Selected Aspects Of Imagery In Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale And Troilus And Criseyde

2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-141
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Stadnik
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Troilus And Criseyde ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

AbstractIn the paper, we address the question of the relation between language and culture from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective. While accounting for the role of language as an aid to cultural transmission in maintaining the community’s conceptual order, we address the question of whether the concept of a linguistic worldview aptly captures the interplay between language and culture. We suggest that, due to cumulative cultural evolution spurred by the incessant development of human knowledge, layers of conceptualisations accumulate over time. It is proposed that this palimpsest of conceptualisations results from human interaction that transcends the constraints of the present moment, encompassing the past and present, as well as delineating possible developments of the community’s future conceptual order.

Cultural Evolution in Animals

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Controlled Experiments ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Invertebrate Species ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

In recent decades, a burgeoning literature has documented the cultural transmission of behavior through social learning in numerous vertebrate and invertebrate species. One meaning of “cultural evolution in animals” refers to these discoveries, and I present an overview of key findings. I then address the other meaning of the term focused on cultural changes within a lineage. Such changes in humans, described as “cumulative cultural evolution,” have been spectacular, but relatively little attention has yet been paid to the topic in nonhuman animals, other than asserting that the process is unique to humans. A variety of evidence including both controlled experiments and field observations has begun to challenge this view, and in some behavioral domains, notably birdsong, cultural evolution has been studied for many years. In this review, I dissect concepts of cultural evolution and cumulative culture and appraise the accumulating evidence bearing on their nature and significance for evolutionary biology at large.

A theory limited in scope and evidence

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Miu ◽  
Robert Boyd ◽  
Peter J. Richerson ◽  
Thomas J. H. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Comprehensive Theory ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Do So

Abstract What promised to be a refreshing addition to cumulative cultural evolution, by moving the focus from cultural transmission to technological innovation, falls flat through a lack of thoroughness, explanatory power, and data. A comprehensive theory of cumulative cultural change must carefully integrate all existing evidence in a cohesive multi-level account. We argue that the manuscript fails to do so convincingly.

scholarly journals The multiple roles of cultural transmission experiments in understanding human cultural evolution

2008 ◽  
Vol 363 (1509) ◽  
pp. 3489-3501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi ◽  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Group Method ◽  
Cultural Innovation ◽  
Replacement Method ◽  
Linear Chains ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

In this paper, we explore how experimental studies of cultural transmission in adult humans can address general questions regarding the ‘who, what, when and how’ of human cultural transmission, and consequently inform a theory of human cultural evolution. Three methods are discussed. The transmission chain method, in which information is passed along linear chains of participants, has been used to identify content biases in cultural transmission. These concern the kind of information that is transmitted. Several such candidate content biases have now emerged from the experimental literature. The replacement method, in which participants in groups are gradually replaced or moved across groups, has been used to study phenomena such as cumulative cultural evolution, cultural group selection and cultural innovation. The closed-group method, in which participants learn in groups with no replacement, has been used to explore issues such as who people choose to learn from and when they learn culturally as opposed to individually. A number of the studies reviewed here have received relatively little attention within their own disciplines, but we suggest that these, and future experimental studies of cultural transmission that build on them, can play an important role in a broader science of cultural evolution.

scholarly journals Rules of thumb and cultural evolution: How simple heuristics have guided human adaptation and the emergence of cultural complexity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roope Oskari Kaaronen ◽  
Mikael A. Manninen ◽  
Jussi T. Eronen
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Ecological Rationality ◽  
Simple Rules ◽  
Rules Of Thumb ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Simple Heuristics

This article combines insights from ecological rationality and cultural evolution to illustrate how simple heuristics – colloquially, “rules of thumb” – have guided human behaviour and the evolution of complex cultures. Through a variety of examples and case studies, we discuss how human cultures have used rules of thumb in domains as diverse as foraging, resource management, social learning, moral judgment, and cultural niche construction. We propose four main arguments. Firstly, we argue that human societies have a rich cultural history in applying rules of thumb to guide daily activities and social organization. Second, we emphasise how rules of thumb may be convenient units of cultural transmission and high-fidelity social learning – the backbones of cumulative cultural evolution. Third, we highlight how rules of thumb can facilitate efficient decision making by making use of environmental and bodily features. Fourth, we discuss how simple rules of thumb may serve as building blocks for the emergence of more complex cultural patterns. This paper sets a research agenda for studying how simple rules contribute to cultural evolution in the past, the present, and the Anthropocene future.

scholarly journals Cumulative culture in the laboratory: methodological and theoretical challenges

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1879) ◽  
pp. 20180677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Miton ◽  
Mathieu Charbonneau
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Task Complexity ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Group Context ◽  
Closed Groups ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Diagnostic Criterion

In the last decade, cultural transmission experiments (transmission chains, replacement, closed groups and seeded groups) have become important experimental tools in investigating cultural evolution. However, these methods face important challenges, especially regarding the operationalization of theoretical claims. In this review, we focus on the study of cumulative cultural evolution, the process by which traditions are gradually modified and, for technological traditions in particular, improved upon over time. We identify several mismatches between theoretical definitions of cumulative culture and their implementation in cultural transmission experiments. We argue that observed performance increase can be the result of participants learning faster in a group context rather than effectively leading to a cumulative effect. We also show that in laboratory experiments, participants are asked to complete quite simple tasks, which can undermine the evidential value of the diagnostic criterion traditionally used for cumulative culture (i.e. that cumulative culture is a process that produces solutions that no single individual could have invented on their own). We show that the use of unidimensional metrics of cumulativeness drastically curtail the variation that may be observed, which raises specific issues in the interpretation of the experimental evidence. We suggest several solutions to these mismatches (learning times, task complexity and variation) and develop the use of design spaces in experimentally investigating old and new questions about cumulative culture.

Cultural evolution and cultural psychology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Phylogenetic Analyses ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Cultural Inheritance ◽  
Human Psychology

Cultural evolution is a branch of the evolutionary sciences which assumes that (i) human cognition and behaviour is shaped not only by genetic inheritance, but also cultural inheritance (also known as social learning), and (ii) this cultural inheritance constitutes a Darwinian evolutionary system that can be analysed and studied using tools borrowed from evolutionary biology. In this chapter I explore the numerous compatibilities between the fields of cultural evolution and cultural psychology, and the potential mutual benefits from their closer alignment. First, understanding the evolutionary context within which human psychology emerged gives added significance to the findings of cultural psychologists, which reinforce the conclusion reached by cultural evolution scholars that humans inhabit a ‘cultural niche’ within which the major means of adaptation to difference environments is cultural, rather than genetic. Hence, we should not be surprised that human psychology shows substantial cross-cultural variation. Second, a focus on cultural transmission pathways, drawing on cultural evolution models and empirical research, can help to explain to the maintenance of, and potential changes in, cultural variation in psychological processes. Evidence from migrants, in particular, points to a mix of vertical, oblique and horizontal cultural transmission that can explain the differential stability of different cultural dimensions. Third, cultural evolutionary methods offer powerful means of testing historical (“macro-evolutionary”) hypotheses put forward by cultural psychologists for the origin of psychological differences. Explanations in terms of means of subsistence, rates of environmental change or pathogen prevalence can be tested using quantitative models and phylogenetic analyses that can be used to reconstruct cultural lineages. Evolutionary considerations also point to potential problems with current cross-country comparisons conducted within cultural psychology, such as the non-independence of data points due to shared cultural history. Finally, I argue that cultural psychology can play a central role in a synthetic evolutionary science of culture, providing valuable links between individual-oriented disciplines such as experimental psychology and neuroscience on the one hand, and society-oriented disciplines such as anthropology, history and sociology on the other, all within an evolutionary framework that provides links to the biological sciences.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Pacchioni
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Radical Transformation

About 10,000 years ago, at the beginning of the agriculturalrevolution, on the whole earth lived between 5 and 8 million hunter-gatherers, all belonging to the Homo sapiens species. Five thousand years later, freed from the primary needs for survival, some belonging to that species enjoyed the privilege of devoting themselves to philosophical speculation and the search for transcendental truths. It was only in the past two hundred years, however, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, that reaping nature’s secrets and answering fundamental questions posed by the Universe have become for many full-time activities, on the way to becoming a real profession. Today the number of scientists across the globe has reached and exceeded 10 million, that is, more than the whole human race 10,000 years ago. If growth continues at the current rate, in 2050 we will have 35 million people committed full-time to scientific research. With what consequences, it remains to be understood. For almost forty years I myself have been concerned with science in a continuing, direct, and passionate way. Today I perceive, along with many colleagues, especially of my generation, that things are evolving and have changed deeply, in ways unimaginable until a few years ago and, in some respects, not without danger. What has happened in the world of science in recent decades is more than likely a mirror of a similar and equally radical transformation taking place in modern society, particularly with the advent ...

Copy the In-group: Group Membership Trumps Perceived Reliability, Warmth, and Competence in a Social-Learning Task

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110322
Author(s):  
Marcel Montrey ◽  
Thomas R. Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Minimal Group Paradigm ◽  
Learning Game ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Surprisingly little is known about how social groups influence social learning. Although several studies have shown that people prefer to copy in-group members, these studies have failed to resolve whether group membership genuinely affects who is copied or whether group membership merely correlates with other known factors, such as similarity and familiarity. Using the minimal-group paradigm, we disentangled these effects in an online social-learning game. In a sample of 540 adults, we found a robust in-group-copying bias that (a) was bolstered by a preference for observing in-group members; (b) overrode perceived reliability, warmth, and competence; (c) grew stronger when social information was scarce; and (d) even caused cultural divergence between intermixed groups. These results suggest that people genuinely employ a copy-the-in-group social-learning strategy, which could help explain how inefficient behaviors spread through social learning and how humans maintain the cultural diversity needed for cumulative cultural evolution.

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