Environment-induced changes in selective constraints on social learning during the peopling of the Americas

Buchanan, Briggs; Chao, Anne; Chiu, Chun‐Huo; Colwell, Robert K.; O’Brien, Michael J.; Werner, Angelia; Eren, Metin I.

doi:10.1038/srep44431

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Under circumstances where ecological conditions change, say, on a generational scale, the mean trait value is often optimal, leading to frequency-dependent bias, or conformism. 60 As Clovis groups moved into eastern North America, they encountered environments that were more heterogeneous than those in the west. 88 This is consistent with a stronger degree of social learning (biased transmission) in the west relative to the east, since western groups produced fewer point forms overall and produced a few particular forms more frequently.…”

Section: Lov I S L Ea R Ni N G a N D T Ra N Sm Issionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…60 As Clovis groups moved into eastern North America, they encountered environments that were more heterogeneous than those in the west. 60 49 40 In other words, information producers took over a larger proportion of the learning process.…”

Section: Lov I S L Ea R Ni N G a N D T Ra N Sm Issionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…60 This means that we benefit from a temporal resolution not currently available in the study of Homo sapiens dispersals on other continents, which occurred over much longer periods. 60 This means that we benefit from a temporal resolution not currently available in the study of Homo sapiens dispersals on other continents, which occurred over much longer periods.…”

Section: Con CL U S I Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…57,58 2 | S O U R CE S OF CL OV IS -P OI N T V A RI A TI ON Three interrelated issues immediately come to mind when the topic of variation comes up: how and why variants come to be produced in the first place, how quickly they spread, and how successfully they compete with one another. 40,42,43,50,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65] The precise causes of the variation are open to question. Things would simply stay the same.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1). 40,42,43,50,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65] The precise causes of the variation are open to question. One might reside in raw material, but numerous studies have shown that although Clovis groups used a wide variety of materials for points, including chert, quartz, orthoquartzite, and various metavolcanic rocks, 66,67 raw material appears to have played no role in constraining point shape.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cultural learning and the Clovis colonization of North America

O’Brien¹,

Buchanan

2017

Evolutionary Anthropology

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The timing of the earliest colonization of North America is debatable, but what is not at issue is the point of origin of the early colonists: Humans entered the continent from Beringia and then made their way south along or near the Pacific Coast and/or through a corridor that ran between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets in western North America. At some point, they abandoned their Arctic-based tool complex for one more adapted to an entirely different environment. That new techno-complex is termed "Clovis"; its dispersal allows us to examine, at a fine scale, how colonization processes played out across a vast continent that at the time had, at best, a very small resident population. Clovis has figured prominently in American archeology since the first Clovis points were identified in eastern New Mexico in the 1930s. However, the successful marriage of learning models grounded in evolutionary theory and modern analytical methods that began roughly a decade ago has begun to pay significant dividends in terms of what we know about the rapid spread of human groups across the last sizable landmass to witness human occupation.

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Section: Lov I S L Ea R Ni N G a N D T Ra N Sm Issionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lov I S L Ea R Ni N G a N D T Ra N Sm Issionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Con CL U S I Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cultural learning and the Clovis colonization of North America

O’Brien¹,

Buchanan

2017

Evolutionary Anthropology

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Learning Strategies and Population Dynamics During the Pleistocene Colonization of North America

O’Brien

Bentley²

2020

Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology

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Debunking Deterministic Narratives of Technological Development Through Experimentation: A Critical Review of the Prehistory of Tin Bronze Alloying

Montes-Landa,

Timberlake,

Martinón-Torres

2024

J Archaeol Method Theory

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The currently accepted narrative on the prehistory of bronze alloying technology follows deterministic, outdated assumptions of technological progression that ignore the role of contextual and performance factors in the decision-making processes, thus neglecting human agency. In essence, it is expected that newer techniques were overarchingly more advanced than older ones and hence replaced them. The validity of this narrative should be challenged and revised. A critical analysis of worldwide literature exposed that, contrary to predictions of the accepted theory, (1) the oldest alloying techniques persisted for centuries after newer ones were invented, and (2) several techniques usually coexisted in the same contexts. We hypothesised that these counterintuitive findings could be explained by differences in performance between techniques, (dis)advantageous at different settings. To obtain empirical information on the performance of techniques and test for behaviourally relevant performance differences between them, a series of alloying experiments were conducted. The results show that all techniques can produce objects of broadly equivalent quality while offering different trade-offs during production. Therefore, every technique—or a combination—can be advantageous under certain conditions, and there are no grounds to support a linear trajectory of substitution. These results debunk the traditional narrative and predict that co-smelting and cementation techniques were more frequently practiced in the past than hitherto assumed. Our propositions prompt a readjustment of explanatory models of bronze production organisation, trade, and consumption while opening unexplored research paths for archaeology and the history of technology.

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Environment-induced changes in selective constraints on social learning during the peopling of the Americas

Cited by 17 publications

References 53 publications

Cultural learning and the Clovis colonization of North America

Cultural learning and the Clovis colonization of North America

Learning Strategies and Population Dynamics During the Pleistocene Colonization of North America

Debunking Deterministic Narratives of Technological Development Through Experimentation: A Critical Review of the Prehistory of Tin Bronze Alloying

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