Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Mapping complex social transmission: technical constraints on the evolution of cultures

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Social transmission is at the core of cultural evolutionary theory. It occurs when a demonstrator uses mental representations to produce some public displays (utterances, behaviors, artifacts, etc.) which in turn allow a learner to acquire similar mental representations. Although cultural evolutionists do not dispute this view of social transmission, they typically abstract away from the multistep nature of the process when they speak of cultural variants at large, thereby referring both to variation and evolutionary change in mental representations as well as in their corresponding public displays. This conflation suggests that differentiating each step of the transmission process is redundant. In this paper, I examine different forms of interplay between the multistep nature of social transmission and the metric spaces used by cultural evolutionists to measure cultural variation and to model cultural change. I offer a conceptual analysis of what assumptions seem to be at work when cultural evolutionists conflate the complex causal sequence of social transmission as a single space of variation in which populations evolve. To this aim, I use the framework of variation spaces, a formal framework commonly used in evolutionary biology, and I develop two theoretical concepts, ‘technique’ and ‘technical space’, for addressing cases where the complexity of social transmission defies the handy assumption of a single variation space for cultural change.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Similarity of mental content might appear at first sight to be a better measure of similarity of mental representations, but mental content can only be assessed through the proxy of the behaviors expressing that content. This is because we do not have any direct access to someone else’s (and possibly even our own) mental contents.

  2. Cultural epidemiologists (Claidière et al. 2014; Claidière and Sperber 2007, 2010; Sperber 1996, 2000, 2006; Sperber and Hirschfeld 2004) agree with the minimal characterization I have offered above. Sperber (2006) explicitly describes social transmission as a social cognitive causal chain (SCCC), a sequential interlocking of private mental representations and public representations. Another theoretically-loaded approach to characterizing the multistep nature of social transmission is adopted by the proponents of an analogy between genetic and cultural inheritance (Boyd and Richerson 1985; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Mesoudi 2011). Mental representations serve as cultural analogs of the genotype and public displays as cultural analogs of the phenotype (e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1985, pp. 33–36; Mesoudi 2011, p. 44). Others refer to mental representations as ideational units, and public displays as empirical units (e.g., O'Brien et al. 2010). It goes beyond the scope of this paper to critically examine and compare these different theoretical approaches as they are based on the minimal view I am examining here.

  3. Examples of the use of the conflation assumption are not restricted to idealized mathematical models. In the laboratory experiments conducted by Mesoudi and O’Brien (2008a), the authors track only the shape of ‘virtual arrow-heads’ produced in their experimental set up, which points out that they are assuming that what is visually represented on the Ipads they use for the experiment corresponds to what their subjects intend to transmit. The assumption becomes clearer once it is pointed out that the intricacies of the actual knapping techniques used to produce the real arrow-heads (the evolution of which they are modelling) are replaced by pinches on an iPad, an extremely unsophisticated behavior. What this replacement shows is that, whatever the technique used for producing public displays, no differences in variation is expected between what individuals want to transmit (mental representations) and what these individuals actually use to do so (public displays, here a visual picture on an Ipad). This sort of operationalization of the conflation assumption will be made clearer in the discussion that follows (see, especially, “Technical constraints on social transmission” section).

  4. Even memeticists (Blackmore 1999; Dennett 1995) agree on this minimal characterization, even though they characterize mental representations and public displays as cultural replicators in their own right. The mere fact that imitation is involved in memetic transmission means that, at some step, mental representations and public displays are involved in the process of cultural replication, whichever one if any is the preferred cultural replicator.

  5. I talk of probability and not of the number of transformations in order to stay coherent with current practice in cultural evolutionary theory. In many models, neighbor variants can be accessed with different probabilities, and often accessing some more probable variant increases the chance that other variants can be accessed in the next generation.

  6. Perceptual discriminations of object properties such as length or weight each has its own ratio, which varies with the discriminating modality, and is commonly referred to as the “Weber fraction” of the measurement or as the “Weber-Fechner law”.

  7. Here I emphasize the evolutionary constraints imposed by the demonstration process of social transmission. Of course, social transmission also depends on the acquisition process (see Fig. 1). Others have studied the acquisition phase in more detail, which in turn can also impose its lot of constraints, enabling spaces, and difficulties in measuring the topological structure of cultural variation. For instance, cultural epidemiologists have been studying the inference processes that extract the relevant information to be learned from public displays (Griffiths et al. 2008; Kirby et al. 2007, 2008; Scott-Phillips and Kirby 2010; Sperber and Hirschfeld 2004). I see no reason why the acquisition phase should not also benefit from an informed use of the spatial framework presented in the previous section.

  8. This definition does not preclude non-artifactual public displays, such as behaviors, from being products of techniques. For instance, dancing depends on a set of cognitive processes and decisions, often the manipulation of some object (e.g., a hat and a cane, another dancer), implies a series of physical processes (e.g., moon-walking and friction), etc., but produces no artifacts (aside from sweat and scuffed floors).

  9. Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981 pp. 308–314) take blade variation and evolution as a candidate example of mutation (copying-error) in continuous traits.

  10. See the papers in Desrosiers (2012) for reviews of the ethnoarchaeological distribution of blade variation.

  11. For each mode, Pelegrin tested the differences induced in the range of producible blades when using pressure tools with different tip materials (ivory vs. copper), when using different core materials (flint and obsidian), and when using heat-treatment of the core. More techniques are possible given that crutches may themselves vary in design and manner of use (Clark 1982; Crabtree 1968). The same goes for the different core stabilizers (Pelegrin 2012).

References

  • Acerbi A, Tennie C, Nunn CL (2011) Modeling imitation and emulation in constrained search spaces. Learn Behav 39(2):104–114

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Acerbi A, Jacquet PO, Tennie C (2012) Behavioral constraints and the evolution of faithful social learning. Curr Zool 58(2):307–318

    Google Scholar 

  • Bettinger RL, Eerkens J (1997) Evolutionary implications of metrical variation in Great Basin projectile points. Archeol Pap Am Anthropol Assoc 7:177–191

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bettinger RL, Eerkens JW (1999) Point typologies, cultural transmission, and the spread of bow-and-arrow technology in the prehistoric Great Basin. Am Antiq 64:231–242

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackmore S (1999) The meme machine. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1996) Why culture is common, but cultural evolution is rare. Proc Br Acad 88:77–93

    Google Scholar 

  • Cavalli-Sforza LL, Feldman MW (1981) Cultural transmission and evolution: a quantitative approach. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Claidière N, Sperber D (2007) The role of attraction in cultural evolution. J Cognit Cult 7:89–111

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Claidière N, Sperber D (2010) Imitation explains the propagation, not the stability of animal culture. Proc R Soc B 277:651–659

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Claidière N, Scott-Phillips TC, Sperber D (2014) How Darwinian is cultural evolution? Philos Trans R Soc B 369(1642):20130368

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark JE (1982) Manufacture of Mesoamerican prismatic blades: an alternative technique. Am Antiq 47:355–376

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crabtree DE (1968) Mesoamerican polyhedral cores and prismatic blades. Am Antiq 33:446–478

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1995) Darwin’s dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life. Touchstone, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Desrosiers PM (ed) (2012) The emergence of pressure blade making: from origin to modern experimentation. Springer, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Durham WH (1991) Coevolution: genes, culture, and human diversity. Stanford University Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  • Eerkens J (2000) Practice makes within 5% of perfect: the role of visual perception, motor skills, and human memory in artifact variation and standardization. Curr Anthropol 41:663–668

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eerkens J, Bettinger RL (2001) Techniques for assessing standardization in artifact assemblages: can we scale material variability? Am Antiq 66:493–504

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eerkens JW, Lipo CP (2005) Cultural transmission, copying errors, and the generation of variation in material culture and the archaeological record. J Anthropol Archaeol 24:316–334

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eerkens JW, Lipo CP (2007) Cultural transmission theory and the archaeological record: providing context to understanding variation and temporal changes in material culture. J Archaeol Res 15:239–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eerkens JW, Lipo CP (2008) Cultural transmission of copying errors and the evolution of variation in woodland pots. In: Stark MT, Bowser BJ, Horne L (eds) Cultural transmission and material culture: breaking down boundaries. University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, pp 63–81

  • Enquist M, Ghirlanda S, Eriksson K (2011) Modelling the evolution and diversity of cumulative culture. Philos Trans R Soc B 366:412–423

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaal SA (1964) Point set topology. Academic Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gandon E, Roux V, Coyle T (2014) Copying errors of potters from three cultures: predictable directions for a so-called random phenomenon. J Anthropol Archaeol 33:99–107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths TL, Kalish ML, Lewandowsky S (2008) Theoretical and empirical evidence for the impact of inductive biases on cultural evolution. Philos Trans R Soc B 363:3503–3514

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall BK (1999) Evolutionary developmental biology. Springer, Dordrecht

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hallgrímsson B, Hall BK (eds) (2011) Variation: a central concept in biology. Academic Press, Burlington

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton MJ, Buchanan B (2009) The accumulation of stochastic copying errors causes drift in culturally transmitted technologies: quantifying Clovis evolutionary dynamics. J Anthropol Archaeol 28:55–69

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heintz C, Claidière N (in press) Current Darwinism in Social Science. In: Lecointre G, Huneman P, Machery E, Silberstein M (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Berlin: Springer

  • Heyes CM (1993) Imitation, culture and cognition. Anim Behav 46:999–1010

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoppitt W, Laland KN (2013) Social learning: an introduction to mechanisms, methods, and models. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Inizan M-L, Reduron-Ballinger M, Roche H, Tixier J (1995) Technologie de la pierre taillée. CREP, Meudon

    Google Scholar 

  • Kempe M, Lycett SJ, Mesoudi A (2012) An experimental test of the accumulated copying error model of cultural mutation for Acheulean handaxe size. PLoS ONE 7:e48333

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirby S, Dowman M, Griffiths TL (2007) Innateness and culture in the evolution of language. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104:5241–5245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirby S, Cornish H, Smith K (2008) Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: an experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105:10681–10686

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laland KN, Brown GR (2010) Sense and nonsense, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Lycett SJ (2011) “Most beautiful and most wonderful”: those endless stone tool forms. J Evolut Psychol 9:143–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lyman RL, O’Brien MJ (1998) The goals of evolutionary archaeology. Curr Anthropol 39:615–652

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maynard Smith J et al (1985) Developmental constraints and evolution: a perspective from the Mountain Lake conference on development and evolution. Q Rev Biol 60:265–287

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGhee GR Jr (1999) Theoretical morphology: the concept and its applications. Columbia University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • McGhee GR Jr (2007) The geometry of evolution: adaptive landscapes and theoretical morphospaces. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • McGhee GR Jr (2011) Convergent evolution: limited forms most beautiful. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi A (2011) Cultural evolution: how Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi A, O’Brien MJ (2008a) The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile point technology I: an experimental simulation. Am Antiq 73:3–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi A, O’Brien MJ (2008b) The learning and transmission of hierarchical cultural recipes. Biol Theory 3:63–72

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi A, Whiten A, Laland KN (2006) Towards a unified science of cultural evolution. Behav Brain Sci 29:329–383

    Google Scholar 

  • Neiman F (1995) Stylistic variation in evolutionary perspective: inferences from decorative diversity and interassemblage distance in illinois woodland ceramic assemblages. Am Antiq 60:7–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien MJ, Lyman RL (2000) Applying evolutionary archaeology: a systematic approach. Kluwer Academic Publishers, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien MJ, Lyman RL, Mesoudi A, VanPool TL (2010) Cultural traits as units of analysis. Philos Trans R Soc B 365:3797–3806

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pelegrin J (2012) New experimental observations for the characterization of pressure blade production techniques. In: Desrosiers PM (ed) The emergence of pressure blade making: from origin to modern experimentation. Springer, New York, pp 465–500

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Pelegrin J, Karlin C, Bodu P (1988) “Chaînes opératoires”: un outil pour le préhistorien. In: Tixier J (ed) Technologie préhistorique, vol 25. Éditions du CNRS, Paris, pp 55–62

    Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M, Kaplan J (2006) Making sense of evolution: the conceptual foundations of evolutionary biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Richerson PJ, Boyd R (2005) Not by genes alone: how culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Schillinger K, Mesoudi A, Lycett SJ (2014) Copying-error and the cultural evolution of “additive” vs. “reductive” material traditions: an experimental assessment. Am Antiq 79:128–143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott-Phillips TC, Kirby S (2010) Language evolution in the laboratory. Trends Cognit Sci 14:411–417

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (1996) Explaining culture: a naturalistic approach. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (2000) An objection to the memetic approach to culture. In: Aunger R (ed) Darwinizing culture. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 163–173

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (2006) Why a deep understanding of cultural evolution is incompatible with shallow psychology. In: Enfield NJ, Levinson SC (eds) Roots of human sociality. Berg, Oxford, pp 431–449

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D, Hirschfeld LA (2004) The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity. Trends Cognit Sci 8:4046

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D, Wilson D (1995) Relevance: communication and cognition, 2nd edn. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Stadler BMR, Stadler PF, Wagner GP, Fontana W (2001) The topology of the possible: formal spaces underlying patterns of evolutionary change. J Theor Biol 213:241–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whittaker JC (1994) Flintknapping: making and understanding stone tools. University of Texas Press, Austin

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Werner Callebaut, Brian McLoone, Olivier Morin, Adam Westra, and two anonymous referees for useful comments on a previous draft. I also thank the fellows at the KLI for useful discussions, Louis Sagnières for discussions about techniques, and John C. Whittaker and Woody Blackwell for explaining the limits of flintknapping techniques to me, and taking my questions about impossible and improbable lithic tools morphologies seriously. This paper was written with the financial support of the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture while I was being hosted by the KLI Institute.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. KLI Institute, Martinstrasse 12, 3400, Klosterneuburg, Austria

    Mathieu Charbonneau

Authors
  1. Mathieu Charbonneau
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mathieu Charbonneau.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Charbonneau, M. Mapping complex social transmission: technical constraints on the evolution of cultures. Biol Philos 30, 527–546 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-015-9487-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-015-9487-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation