Cultural Evolution: A Review of Theory, Findings and Controversies

Abstract

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.

Hook innovation boosts foraging efficiency in tool-using crows

“…Natural selection should thus favour traits that support the manufacture of this more complex tool type. These might include characteristics (cognitive, motor, or physiological) that confer a tendency to produce specific design features such as hooks (so-called 'inductive biases' or 'attractors' 10,18 ), or more general cognitive abilities that support the independent or social learning of effective tool designs 18 . Despite extensive research efforts over the past 20 years 2 , we are yet to understand how individual NC crows acquire the capacity to produce specific tool designs, and the mechanisms by which the species' most complex tools might have evolved from simpler precursors.…”

Applying cultural evolution to sustainability challenges: an introduction to the special issue

“…In the more than 3 decades since there has been substantial growth in cultural evolution research, evidenced by the emergence of a new professional society, the Cultural Evolution Society, which held its first meeting in 2017. Several accessible review articles (Richerson and Henrich 2012;Mesoudi 2016), book chapters (Morgan et al 2015), and books (Richerson and Boyd 2005;Mesoudi 2011;Henrich 2015;Boyd 2017) have covered the general principles, core concepts, and emerging insights in this field. We provide a brief overview to explain the relevance of cultural evolution for sustainability scientists.…”

“…In the cultural evolution literature, "culture" is defined as socially transmitted information, which can include beliefs, values, behaviors, and knowledge, and-more specific to sustainability science-the technologies, lifestyles, consumption patterns, norms, institutions, and worldviews that ultimately shape human impacts on the environment. This approach typically focuses on individual cultural traits or variants (Boyd and Richerson 1985;Mesoudi 2016).…”

“…Traits may also get copied more preferentially based on their content, regardless of the ultimate effect on an individual. For instance, experimental studies suggest that individuals are more attentive to cultural traits that generate positive or negative emotional reactions or contain social information (Mesoudi 2016) because such behaviors or beliefs were likely to have been adaptive in our ancestral environments (Richerson and Henrich 2012;Mesoudi 2016).…”

Are Lithics and Fauna a Match Made in (Prehistoric) Heaven?

“…BTechnological recipes^may be persistently favored in inter-generational transmission due to their functional benefits, but also because of conservatism, anti-novelty bias, or biases related to the status of the model from which the variant is learned rather than to its functional properties (see reviews in Mesoudi 2011Mesoudi , 2015Mesoudi and O'Brien 2008;O'Dwyer and Kandler 2017). The non-reversible, reductive nature of lithic production makes it susceptible to knapper errors, such that it required learning through imitation as a means of faithful copying (Schillinger et al 2015(Schillinger et al , 2016.…”