scholarly journals Early knapping techniques do not necessitate cultural transmission

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Daniel Snyder ◽  
Jonathan Scott Reeves ◽  
Claudio Tennie
Keyword(s):  
Reverse Engineering ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Isolation ◽  
Alternative Hypotheses ◽  
Human Participants

Early stone tools are claimed to be the earliest evidence for the cultural transmission of toolmaking techniques, and with it, cumulative culture. This claim has ostensibly been supported by experimental studies wherein modern humans learned stone tool production (knapping) in conditions that provided opportunities for cultural transmission. However, alternative hypotheses propose that individual learning was sufficient for the expression of early knapping techniques. In order to evaluate this possibility, the capacities of individuals to independently re-innovate early knapping techniques need to be determined. For this, individuals must be tested in cultural isolation, i.e., in a test condition in which knapping techniques cannot be culturally transmitted via demonstrations or reverse engineering. Here, we report on the results of this test condition with human participants (N = 28). Naïve individuals spontaneously re-innovated various early knapping techniques, resulting in products resembling the earliest core and flake technologies. These results contradict previous hypotheses and conclusions of earlier experiments that explicitly implicated cultural transmission in Oldowan stone tool production. They suggest instead that knapping techniques among pre-modern hominins could have been individually derived rather than necessitating cultural transmission.

scholarly journals Cultural transmission and biological markets

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Loverdo ◽  
Hugo Viciana
Keyword(s):  
Kin Selection ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
Evolutionary Stability ◽  
Market Model ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Learning Abilities ◽  
Biological Markets ◽  
Biological Market

AbstractActive cultural transmission of fitness-enhancing behavior can be seen as a costly strategy, one whose evolutionary stability poses a Darwinian puzzle. In this article, we offer a biological market model of cultural transmission that substitutes or complements existing kin-selection based theories for the evolution of cultural capacities. We explicitly formulate how a biological market can account for the evolution of deference and prestige-related phenomena, as well as how it can affect the dynamics of cumulative culture. We show that, under certain conditions, teaching evolves even when innovations are not sufficiently opaque and can be acquired by emulators via inadvertent transmission. Furthermore, teaching in a biological market is a precondition for enhanced individual learning abilities.

Experimental and Archaeological Verification of an Index of Retouch for Hafted Bifaces

2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 743-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Andrefsky
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Data Set ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Projectile Points

The relative amount of retouch on stone tools is central to many archaeological studies linking stone tool assemblages to broader issues of human social and economic land-use strategies. Unfortunately, most retouch measures deal with flake and blade tools and few (if any) have been developed for hafted bifaces and projectile points. This paper introduces a new index for measuring and comparing amount of retouch on hafted bifaces and projectile points that can be applied regardless of size or typological variance. The retouch index is assessed initially with an experimental data set of hafted bifaces that were dulled and resharpened on five occasions. The retouch index is then applied to a hafted biface assemblage made from tool stone that has been sourced by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF). Results of both assessments show that the hafted biface retouch index (HRI) is effective for determining the amount of retouch and the degree to which the hafted bifaces have been curated.

scholarly journals Digital culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Acerbi
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Future Directions

Cultural evolution can provide a useful framework to understand how information is produced, transmitted, and selected in contemporary online, digital, media. The diffusion of digital technologies triggered a radical departure from previous modalities of cultural transmission but, at the same time, general characteristics of human cultural evolution and cognition influence these developments. In this chapter, I will explore some areas where the links between cultural evolution research and digital media seem more promising. As cultural evolution-inspired research on internet phenomena is still in its infancy, these areas represent suggestions and links with works in other disciplines more than reviews of past research in cultural evolution. These include topics such as how to characterise the online effects of social influence and the spread of information; the possibility that digital, online, media could enhance cumulative culture; and the differences between online and offline cultural transmission. In the last section I will consider other possible future directions: the influences of different affordances in different media supporting cultural transmission; the role of producers of cultural traits; and, finally, some considerations on the effects on cultural dynamics of algorithms selecting information.

scholarly journals Habitual Stone-Tool Aided Extractive Foraging in White-Faced Capuchins, Cebus Capucinus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan J Barrett ◽  
Claudio M Monteza-moreno ◽  
Tamara DOGANDŽIĆ ◽  
Nicolas Zwyns ◽  
Alicia IBÁÑEZ ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
National Park ◽  
Resource Limitation ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cebus Capucinus ◽  
Hermit Crabs ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Extractive Foraging ◽  
First Case ◽  
One Year

ABSTRACTHabitual reliance on tool use is a marked behavioral difference between wild robust (genus Sapajus) and gracile (genus Cebus) capuchin monkeys. Despite being well studied and having a rich repertoire of social and extractive foraging traditions, Cebus sp have rarely been observed engaging in tool use and have never been reported to use stone tools. In contrast, habitual tool use and stone-tool use by Sapajus is widespread. We discuss factors which might explain these differences in patterns of tool use between Cebus and Sapajus. We then report the first case of habitual stone-tool use in a gracile capuchin: a population of white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus imitator) in Coiba National Park, Panama who habitually rely on hammerstone and anvil tool use to access structurally protected food items in coastal areas including Terminalia catappa seeds, hermit crabs, marine snails, terrestrial crabs, and other items. This behavior has persisted on one island in Coiba National Park since at least 2004. From one year of camera trapping, we found that stone tool use is strongly male-biased. Of the 205 unique camera-trap-days where tool use was recorded, adult females were never observed to use stone-tools, although they were frequently recorded at the sites and engaged in scrounging behavior. Stone-tool use occurs year-round in this population, and over half of all identifiable individuals were observed participating. At the most active tool use site, 83.2% of days where capuchins were sighted corresponded with tool use. Capuchins inhabiting the Coiba archipelago are highly terrestrial, under decreased predation pressure and potentially experience resource limitation compared to mainland populations– three conditions considered important for the evolution of stone tool use. White-faced capuchin tool use in Coiba National Park thus offers unique opportunities to explore the ecological drivers and evolutionary underpinnings of stone tool use in a comparative within- and between-species context.

scholarly journals Experimental studies illuminate the cultural transmission of percussive technologies in Homo and Pan

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1682) ◽  
pp. 20140359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Special Power ◽  
Social Learning Processes

The complexity of Stone Age tool-making is assumed to have relied upon cultural transmission, but direct evidence is lacking. This paper reviews evidence bearing on this question provided through five related empirical perspectives. Controlled experimental studies offer special power in identifying and dissecting social learning into its diverse component forms, such as imitation and emulation. The first approach focuses on experimental studies that have discriminated social learning processes in nut-cracking by chimpanzees. Second come experiments that have identified and dissected the processes of cultural transmission involved in a variety of other force-based forms of chimpanzee tool use. A third perspective is provided by field studies that have revealed a range of forms of forceful, targeted tool use by chimpanzees, that set percussion in its broader cognitive context. Fourth are experimental studies of the development of flint knapping to make functional sharp flakes by bonobos, implicating and defining the social learning and innovation involved. Finally, new and substantial experiments compare what different social learning processes, from observational learning to teaching, afford good quality human flake and biface manufacture. Together these complementary approaches begin to delineate the social learning processes necessary to percussive technologies within the Pan – Homo clade.

Neanderthal behaviour and stone tool function at the Middle Palaeolithic site of La Quina, France

Antiquity ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 78 (301) ◽  
pp. 547-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce L. Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Middle Palaeolithic

Neanderthal diet is explored by examining stone tools found at the site of La Quina for residues and microwear. The Neanderthal people are found to be using their scrapers for working plants and woods as well as meat.

Stone Tools

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Old World ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of

The focus of this article is stone tools. The history of stone tool research is linked integrally to the history of archaeology and the study of the human past, and many of the early developments in archaeology were connected with the study of stone artefacts. The identification of stone tools as objects of prehistoric human manufacture was central to the development of nineteenth-century models of prehistoric change, and especially the Three Age system for Old World prehistory. This article draws on concepts derived from interdisciplinary material culture studies to consider the role of the artefact after being discarded. It suggests that it is impossible to understand the meaning or efficacy of stone tools without understanding their ‘afterlives’ following abandonment. This article aims to complement contemporary metrical studies of the identification of stone tools and the description of their production. A brief history of the stone tools is explained and this concludes the article.

The Stories Stones Tell of Language and Its Evolution

2019 ◽  
pp. 304-318
Author(s):  
Shelby S. Putt
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Relationship ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Motor Tasks ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
Pars Opercularis ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Neuroimaging Techniques

Language origins remain shrouded in mystery. With little remaining from our earliest ancestors, language evolution researchers have turned to stone tools to learn about ancestral language capacities, as discussed in this chapter. Because inferior frontal areas of the brain, once thought specific to language, are now known to participate during manual motor tasks as well, technological-origin hypotheses propose that tool-making was a potential cause or contributor to the evolution of language. Cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques to monitor regional brain activation patterns associated with tool-making processes are helping to investigate the potential evolutionary relationship between language and tool-making. These experiments have identified one area in the left dorsal pars opercularis portion of Broca’s area where language and stone tool-making functions rely on similar cognitive operations. A more general motor origin for language seems likely in other inferior frontal areas of the brain. Clearly, stone tools have stories to tell if we know how to listen.

Evolution of Cognitive Archaeology through Evolving Cognitive Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Original Work ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Cognitive Evolution ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Productive Research ◽  
Tool Technology

Tom Wynn’s original work that looked at the evolution of stone tool technology using Piaget’s developmental sequence was the beginning of productive research into the evolution of hominin and human cognition. In this chapter, I evaluate those beginnings and discusses recent attempts to provide a more satisfactory understanding of changes in stone tool technologies, including work by Philip Barnard and William McGrew, subsequent work by Tom Wynn, and my own work with various collaborators. It suggests that some of the previous understandings of cognitive evolution were shaped by the fact that approaches to stone tools were largely determined in the nineteenth century. I propose some new ways of looking at stone tools and the sort of story that allows for more productive models of the evolution of human cognition.

Stone tools and conceptual structure

1995 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
James Steele
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Premotor Area ◽  
Conceptual Structures

AbstractUnderstanding how conceptual structures inform stone tool production and use would help us resolve the issue of a pongid-hominid dichotomy in brain organisation and cognitive ability. Evidence from ideational apraxia suggests that the planning of linguistic and manipulative behaviours is not colocalized in homologous circuits. An alternative account in terms of the evolutionary expansion of the whole prefrontal-premotor area may be more plausible.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document