Cultural Evolution

SYNOPSIS. Culture is made possible by the existence of mechanismsof learning and communication. Because of it, we can profitfrom the experience and ideas of others. It is convenient toinclude in it tools, technologies, and all culturally transmittedbehaviors. At least from an evolutionary point of view, theyshare common mechanisms. It is also becoming increasingly clearthatanimals share with us potential for cultural adaptation, whichis however much more highlydeveloped in humans, as shown forinstance, by the extension of human brain areas that are involvedin control of hand and phonation organs. To understand how culture evolves one can make resort to modelsthat map reasonably well after the necessary substitutions,into those that havebeen useful in biology. A major differencethat one finds is in mechanisms of transmission, which are muchmore varied in culture than in biology. Parent-child (vertical)transmission is present in both. An "infectious" (horizontal)mechanism is characteristic of cultural transmission, but ispractically absent in the genetic case. Other mechanisms oftransmission are reviewed, along with their evolutionary consequences.The variety of these mechanisms can make culture extremely fastand flexible, and there are the great advantages of culturaladaptation vs. genetic adaptation by natural selection, or vs.physiological adaptations (which are relatively fast but highlyspecific: for instance, tanning under exposure to UV). But culturecan also be extremely conservative. Also, some cultural transmissionmechanisms allow heterogeneitybetween individuals to persist,others tend to make populations extremely homogeneous. The study of culture from an evolutionary point of view is young,but very promising.     

Evolution,Cultural Evolution,and Epistemic Optimism

Acta Biotheoretica -     

Patterns and Processes in Cultural Evolution

Darwinian models of cultural change have been motivated, in part, by the desire to provide a framework for the unification of the biological and the human sciences. In this paper, drawing upon a distinction between the evolution of enabling mechanisms for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge (EEM) and the evolution of epistemic theses as cultural products (EET), we propose a model of how culture emerges as a product of biological evolution on the basis of the concept of reaction norms. The goal of this model is to provide a means for conceptualizing how the biological and the cultural realms are connected, when they start to disconnect, and what the key transitions are. We then assess the viability of a Darwinian approach to cultural change. We conclude that the prospects of producing a Darwinian model of cultural change that unifies the human sciences in a way that mirrors the unification of the biological sciences in the light of Darwin’s theory are rather dim.     

Five Misunderstandings About Cultural Evolution

Recent debates about memetics have revealed some widespread misunderstandings about Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution. Drawing from these debates, this paper disputes five common claims: (1) mental representations are rarely discrete, and therefore models that assume discrete, gene-like particles (i.e., replicators) are useless; (2) replicators are necessary for cumulative, adaptive evolution; (3) content-dependent psychological biases are the only important processes that affect the spread of cultural representations; (4) the “cultural fitness” of a mental representation can be inferred from its successful transmission; and (5) selective forces only matter if the sources of variation are random. We close by sketching the outlines of a unified evolutionary science of culture.

Cultural Evolution: Contemporary Viewpoints

Cultural Evolution: Contemporary Viewpoints. Gary M. Feinman and Linda Manzanilla, eds. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2000. 267 pp.     

The Pace of Cultural Evolution

Today, humans inhabit most of the world’s terrestrial habitats. This observation has been explained by the fact that we possess a secondary inheritance mechanism, culture, in addition to a genetic system. Because it is assumed that cultural evolution occurs faster than biological evolution, humans can adapt to new ecosystems more rapidly than other animals. This assumption, however, has never been tested empirically. Here, I compare rates of change in human technologies to rates of change in animal morphologies. I find that rates of cultural evolution are inversely correlated with the time interval over which they are measured, which is similar to what is known for biological rates. This correlation explains why the pace of cultural evolution appears faster when measured over recent time periods, where time intervals are often shorter. Controlling for the correlation between rates and time intervals, I show that (1) cultural evolution is faster than biological evolution; (2) this effect holds true even when the generation time of species is controlled for; and (3) culture allows us to evolve over short time scales, which are normally accessible only to short-lived species, while at the same time allowing for us to enjoy the benefits of having a long life history.     

Negatively-Biased Credulity and the Cultural Evolution of Beliefs

The functions of cultural beliefs are often opaque to those who hold them. Accordingly, to benefit from cultural evolution’s ability to solve complex adaptive problems, learners must be credulous. However, credulity entails costs, including susceptibility to exploitation, and effort wasted due to false beliefs. One determinant of the optimal level of credulity is the ratio between the costs of two types of errors: erroneous incredulity (failing to believe information that is true) and erroneous credulity (believing information that is false). This ratio can be expected to be asymmetric when information concerns hazards, as the costs of erroneous incredulity will, on average, exceed the costs of erroneous credulity; no equivalent asymmetry characterizes information concerning benefits. Natural selection can therefore be expected to have crafted learners’ minds so as to be more credulous toward information concerning hazards. This negatively-biased credulity extends general negativity bias, the adaptive tendency for negative events to be more salient than positive events. Together, these biases constitute attractors that should shape cultural evolution via the aggregated effects of learners’ differential retention and transmission of information. In two studies in the U.S., we demonstrate the existence of negatively-biased credulity, and show that it is most pronounced in those who believe the world to be dangerous, individuals who may constitute important nodes in cultural transmission networks. We then document the predicted imbalance in cultural content using a sample of urban legends collected from the Internet and a sample of supernatural beliefs obtained from ethnographies of a representative collection of the world’s cultures, showing that beliefs about hazards predominate in both.     

作物及其种质资源与人文环境的协同演变学说

作物及其种质资源与人文环境的协同演变学说是关于作物及其种质资源与人文环境相互影响、相互作用和相互发展的理论.一方面,在一个特定环境中种植不同的作物或不同类型的作物会导致形成相应的饮食习惯与人文环境;另一方面,饮食习惯与人文环境又会对作物及其种质资源产生深刻影响,甚至可以引领其演变.其遗传基础是作物在传播和改良过程中发生...     

Prehistoric Cultural Ecology and Evolution: Insights from Southern Jordan

Prehistoric Cultural Ecology and Evolution: Insights from Southern Jordan. Donald O. Henry. New York: Plenum Press, 1995. 466 pp.     

Ecological and Cultural Landscape Restoration and the Cultural Evolution towards a Post-Industrial Symbiosis between Human Society and Nature

I discuss ecological and cultural restoration within the broader context of the critical transition period from the fossil fuel age to the post-industrial global information age. In this cultural evolutionary process, the restoration of natural and cultural landscapes should play a vital role. For this purpose, it has to be guided by a holistic and transdisciplinary systems approach, aiming not only at the organismic but also at the functional and structural restoration of ecological and cultural diversity as total landscape ecodiversity. For the development of suitable restoration strategies, a clear distinction has to be made between different functional classes of natural and cultural solar-powered biosphere and fossil-powered technosphere landscapes, according to their inputs and throughputs of energy and materials, their organisms, their control by natural or human information, their internal self-organization and their regenerative capacities. Not only technosphere landscapes but also intensive agro-industrial landscapes have lost these capacities and are heavily subsidized by fossil energy and chemicals, to the detriment of the environment and human health. They therefore have to be rehabilitated by more sustainable but not less productive agricultural systems based on organic farming. But their natural regenerative capacities can be restored only by regenerative systems, with the help of cultural "neotechnic" information. The promise for an urgently required evolutionary symbiosis between human society and nature in a sustainable post-industrial total human ecosystem lies in the functional integration of such innovative regenerative systems and all natural and cultural biosphere landscapes with healthier and more livable technosphere landscapes. To this goal, ecological and cultural landscape restoration can make an important contribution.     

Cultural Evolution of Puget Sound White-Crowned Sparrow Song Dialects

The songs of male Puget Sound white‐crowned sparrows currently form about 12 dialects along the Pacific Northwest coast. In his survey of 1970, Baptista (Condor 1977; 79: 356–370) defined six of the dialects based on the song's terminal trill because most males at each locality shared the simple syllables (SSs) in this trill. The complex syllables (CSs) in the song's introduction varied among males at a locality, and were often shared among localities. From 1997 to 2004 we revisited nine of the sites Baptista studied to determine whether the SSs and CSs had changed over the 30‐yr interval. Using Baptista's catalogs of SS and CS types as bases for comparison, we found that the relative proportions of CS types changed significantly more over time than did the proportions of SS types. These results suggest that SSs and CSs evolve independently. Observations were also made on the developmental mechanisms that either produce diversity or maintain uniformity in song phrases. In a survey of 670 field‐recorded songs, unique improvizations occurred significantly more often in CSs than in SSs. In a laboratory experiment using hand‐reared males and multiple song tutors, males were significantly more accurate in imitating SSs than CSs. In choosing their final song to keep from their overproduced repertoire, yearling males tended to retain the song type that matched the SSs in the song played back to them. We conclude by discussing how differences in the functions served by these two song phrases may have led to their different rates of cultural evolution.     

Cultural Evolution: A Review of Theory,Findings and Controversies

The last two decades have seen an explosion in research analysing cultural change as a Darwinian evolutionary process. Here I provide an overview of the theory of cultural evolution, including its intellectual history, major theoretical tenets and methods, key findings, and prominent criticisms and controversies. ‘Culture’ is defined as socially transmitted information. Cultural evolution is the theory that this socially transmitted information evolves in the manner laid out by Darwin in The Origin of Species, i.e. it comprises a system of variation, differential fitness and inheritance. Cultural evolution is not, however, neo-Darwinian, in that many of the details of genetic evolution may not apply, such as particulate inheritance and random mutation. Following a brief history of this idea, I review theoretical and empirical studies of cultural microevolution, which entails both selection-like processes wherein some cultural variants are more likely to be acquired and transmitted than others, plus transformative processes that alter cultural information during transmission. I also review how phylogenetic methods have been used to reconstruct cultural macroevolution, including the evolution of languages, technology and social organisation. Finally, I discuss recent controversies and debates, including the extent to which culture is proximate or ultimate, the relative role of selective and transformative processes in cultural evolution, the basis of cumulative cultural evolution, the evolution of large-scale human cooperation, and whether social learning is learned or innate. I conclude by highlighting the value of using evolutionary methods to study culture for both the social and biological sciences.     

The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach

The Evolution of Cultural Diversity:. Phylogenetic Approach . Ruth Mace, Clare J. Holden, and Stephen Shennan, eds. Oxford, U.K.: Cavendish Publishing, 2005. 291 pp.