scholarly journals Cultural Transmission on the Taskscape: Exploring the Effects of Taskscape Visibility on Cultural Diversity

PLoS ONE ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. e0161766
Author(s):  
L. S. Premo ◽  
Gilbert B. Tostevin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission

scholarly journals Evolution of social learning in lattice-structured populations

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kohei Tamura ◽  
Yasuo Ihara
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Computational Experiments ◽  
Parameter Region ◽  
Active Debate

Individual and social learning underpin human cultural diversity and successful expansion into diverse environments. The evolution of social learning has been a subject of active debate: in particular, recent studies considering whether spatial structure favors or disfavors the evolution of social learning have produced mixed results. Here we report the results of our computational experiments in lattice-structured populations, suggesting that spatial structure disfavors the evolution of social learning in a wide parameter region. Our results also indicate that the effect of spatial structure depends on the mode of cultural transmission (from whom social learners acquire behaviors) and the updating scheme (whether individuals update their strategies synchronously or asynchronously).

scholarly journals Culture and Customs

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Waterhouse
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
World War ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
Industrial Culture ◽  
And Gender

Sydney’s pre-industrial culture was comprehensive and public, and most European inhabitants participated as players, performers or spectators. After 1850, however, a series of distinct but overlapping cultures emerged, imported and adapted from Europe and America to meet the needs of a modern, class-based city. In this essay I explore the characteristics of the city’s pre-industrial culture, and map its replacement by a set of sometimes conflicting modern, urban cultures. My aim is also to show how new forms of cultural transmission facilitated a process of cultural resolution after World War I even as new forms of culture based on ethnicity, age and gender emerged to produce a different mix of cultural diversity.

scholarly journals Study on the New Mode of Cultural Diversity Communication and Cooperation in "The Belt and Road Initiative" Construction

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Peilan Peng ◽  
Zewei Fang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Financial Integration ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Security Measures ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
The Belt And Road

<p>The implementation of "the Belt and Road Initiative" requires the development of the "five - connectivity" construction of policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, heart-to-heart communication. Among which, heart-to-heart communication is the premise. In addition, cultural transmission and cooperation is the foundation and guarantee for the construction of heart-to-heart communication contents and methods. What we need to do is to make clear the opportunities and challenges we are faced with and to make a far-reaching strategic deployment and adopt feasible measures and implementing approaches. Some domestic scholars do carry out some researches on the area of cultural communication and analyze some opportunities and challenges confronted. It lacks the analysis on the diversity of the means of cultural transmission and cooperation. The paper proposes an in-depth exploration and research on the implementing approaches and security measures, and it tries to construct a new integrated mode of cultural diversity communication and exchange, so as to promote the implementation of cultural transmission and cooperation to enhance the community of shared interests of "the Belt and Road Initiative".</p>

Effective Population Size and the Effects of Demography on Cultural Diversity and Technological Complexity

2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. S. Premo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Effective Population Size ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Effective Population ◽  
Technological Complexity ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
Census Population Size ◽  
The Relationship

A central tenet of the so-called demographic hypothesis is that larger populations ought to be associated with more diverse and complex toolkits. Recent empirical tests of this expectation have yielded mixed results, leading some to question to what extent changes in population size might explain interesting changes in the prehistoric archaeological record. Here, I employ computer simulation as a heuristic tool to address whether these mixed results reflect deficiencies in the formal models borrowed from population genetics or problems with the generalizations archaeologists have derived from them. I show that two previously published and highly influential models highlight two different effects of demography. My results illustrate how natural selection and cultural selection weaken the relationship between census population size, cultural diversity, and mean skill level, suggesting that one should not expect population size to predict the diversity or complexity of a cultural trait under all conditions. The concept of effective population size is central to understanding why the effects of population size can vary among traits that are passed by different mechanisms of cultural transmission within the same population. In light of these findings, I suggest ways to strengthen (rather than abandon) empirical tests of the demographic hypothesis.

scholarly journals The Cultural Fabric of Human Causal Cognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 922-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Bender ◽  
Sieghard Beller
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Core Components ◽  
Causal Cognition

Causal cognition emerges early in development and confers an important advantage for survival. But does this mean that it is universal in humans? Our cross-disciplinary review suggests a broad evolutionary basis for core components of causal cognition but also underlines the essential role of culturally transmitted content as being uniquely human. The multiple ways in which both content and the key mechanisms of cultural transmission generate cultural diversity suggest that causal cognition in humans is not only colored by their specific cultural background but also shaped more fundamentally by the very fact that humans are a cultural species.

scholarly journals Macro-evolutionary studies of cultural diversity: a review of empirical studies of cultural transmission and cultural adaptation

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1563) ◽  
pp. 402-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Mace ◽  
Fiona M. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Adaptive Behaviour ◽  
History Of Anthropology ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Transmission Pathways

A growing body of theoretical and empirical research has examined cultural transmission and adaptive cultural behaviour at the individual, within-group level. However, relatively few studies have tried to examine proximate transmission or test ultimate adaptive hypotheses about behavioural or cultural diversity at a between-societies macro-level. In both the history of anthropology and in present-day work, a common approach to examining adaptive behaviour at the macro-level has been through correlating various cultural traits with features of ecology. We discuss some difficulties with simple ecological associations, and then review cultural phylogenetic studies that have attempted to go beyond correlations to understand the underlying cultural evolutionary processes. We conclude with an example of a phylogenetically controlled approach to understanding proximate transmission pathways in Austronesian cultural diversity.

scholarly journals Population structure drives cultural diversity in finite populations: A hypothesis for localized community patterns on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0250690
Author(s):  
Carl P. Lipo ◽  
Robert J. DiNapoli ◽  
Mark E. Madsen ◽  
Terry L. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Easter Island ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Rapa Nui ◽  
Isolated Populations ◽  
Community Patterns ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
Social Network Structure

Understanding how and why cultural diversity changes in human populations remains a central topic of debate in cultural evolutionary studies. Due to the effects of drift, small and isolated populations face evolutionary challenges in the retention of richness and diversity of cultural information. Such variation, however, can have significant fitness consequences, particularly when environmental conditions change unpredictably, such that knowledge about past environments may be key to long-term persistence. Factors that can shape the outcomes of drift within a population include the semantics of the traits as well as spatially structured social networks. Here, we use cultural transmission simulations to explore how social network structure and interaction affect the rate of trait retention and extinction. Using Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) as an example, we develop a model-based hypothesis for how the structural constraints of communities living in small, isolated populations had dramatic effects and likely led to preventing the loss of cultural information in both community patterning and technology.

scholarly journals Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (30) ◽  
pp. 7877-7883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristine H. Legare
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Causal Account ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Acquisition Strategies ◽  
Learning Development ◽  
Insight Into

The complexity and variability of human culture is unmatched by any other species. Humans live in culturally constructed niches filled with artifacts, skills, beliefs, and practices that have been inherited, accumulated, and modified over generations. A causal account of the complexity of human culture must explain its distinguishing characteristics: It is cumulative and highly variable within and across populations. I propose that the psychological adaptations supporting cumulative cultural transmission are universal but are sufficiently flexible to support the acquisition of highly variable behavioral repertoires. This paper describes variation in the transmission practices (teaching) and acquisition strategies (imitation) that support cumulative cultural learning in childhood. Examining flexibility and variation in caregiver socialization and children’s learning extends our understanding of evolution in living systems by providing insight into the psychological foundations of cumulative cultural transmission—the cornerstone of human cultural diversity.

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