Clarifying the time frame and units of selection in the cultural group selection hypothesis

Whiten, Andrew; Erdal, David

doi:10.1017/s0140525x15000291

Cited by 1 publication

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“…[ 36 , 37 , 76 , 77 ]) by accounting for a possible origin of cultural group selection, by being explicit about processes, units, levels and interactions (see e.g. [ 78 ]), and, not least, by accounting for how cultural group selection could also have been a bootstrapping process. The prediction that the social protocell may have led to an ETI is based on the potential that group-level selection may act on features that enable further group selection (i.e.…”

Section: The Social Protocell Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

The transition from animal to human culture—simulating the social protocell hypothesis

Andersson

Czárán

2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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The origin of human cumulative culture is commonly envisioned as the appearance (some 2.0–2.5 million years ago) of a capacity to faithfully copy the know-how that underpins socially learned traditions. While certainly plausible, this story faces a steep ‘startup problem’. For example, it presumes that ape-like early Homo possessed specialized cognitive capabilities for faithful know-how copying and that early toolmaking actually required such a capacity. The social protocell hypothesis provides a leaner story, where cumulative culture may have originated even earlier—as cumulative systems of non-cumulative traditions ('institutions' and ‘cultural lifestyles'), via an emergent group-level channel of cultural inheritance. This channel emerges as a side-effect of a specific but in itself unremarkable suite of social group behaviours. It is independent of faithful know-how copying, and an ancestral version is argued to persist in Pan today. Hominin cultural lifestyles would thereby have gained in complexity and sophistication, eventually becoming independent units of selection (socionts) via a cultural evolutionary transition in individuality, abstractly similar to the origin of early cells. We here explore this hypothesis by simulating its basic premises. The model produces the expected behaviour and reveals several additional and non-trivial phenomena as fodder for future work. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions’.

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Section: The Social Protocell Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

The transition from animal to human culture—simulating the social protocell hypothesis

Andersson

Czárán

2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Clarifying the time frame and units of selection in the cultural group selection hypothesis

Abstract: Second, what is the unit of selection? Groups (of human individuals)? Or cultural entities along the lines of "meme-complexes"?

Cited by 1 publication

References 5 publications

The transition from animal to human culture—simulating the social protocell hypothesis

The transition from animal to human culture—simulating the social protocell hypothesis

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