Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-26T02:51:02.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Taking into account the wider evolutionary context of cumulative cultural evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2020

Nicolas Claidière Open the ORCID record for Nicolas Claidière [Opens in a new window]
Nicolas Claidière*
Affiliation:
Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LPC UMR 7290, 13331 Marseille, France. nicolas.claidiere@normalesup.orghttp://www.nicolas.claidiere.fr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The target article reviews evidence showing that technological reasoning is crucial to cumulative technological culture but it fails to discuss the implications for the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) in general. The target article supports the social view of CCE against the more ecological alternative and suggests that CCE appears when specialised individual-learning mechanisms evolve.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 43 , 2020 , e160
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boyd, R. (2013) The cultural evolution of technologies. In: Cultural evolution: Society, technology, language, and religion, vol. 12, eds. Richerson, P. J. & Christiansen, M. H.. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Byrne, R. W. & Whiten, A., eds. (1988) Machiavellian intelligence: Social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes and humans. Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Claidière, N., Smith, K., Kirby, S. & Fagot, J. (2014b) Cultural evolution of systematically structured behaviour in a non-human primate. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 281(1797):20141541. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2014.1541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, L. G., Kendal, R. L., Schapiro, S. J., Thierry, B. & Laland, K. N. (2012) Identification of the social and cognitive processes underlying human cumulative culture. Science (New York, N.Y.) 335(6072):1114–18. doi: 10.1126/science.1213969.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Derex, M., Bonnefon, J. F., Boyd, R. & Mesoudi, A. (2019) Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology. Nature Human Behaviour 3:446–52. doi: 10.1038/s41562-019-0567-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (1992) Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution 22(6):469–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2012) The social brain meets neuroimaging. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16(2):101–102. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.11.013.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feher, O., Wang, H., Saar, S., Mitra, P. P. & Tchernichovski, O. (2009) De novo establishment of wild-type song culture in the zebra finch. Nature 459:564–68. doi: 10.1038/nature07994.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morgan, T. J. H., Uomini, N. T., Rendell, L. E., Chouinard-Thuly, L., Street, S. E., Lewis, H. M., Cross, C. P., Evans, C., Kearney, R., de la Torre, I., Whiten, A. & Laland, K. N. (2015) Experimental evidence for the co-evolution of hominin tool-making teaching and language. Nature Communications 6:1–8. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms7029.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rendell, L., Boyd, R., Cownden, D., Enquist, M., Eriksson, K., Feldman, M. W., Fogarty, L., Ghirlanda, S., Lillicrap, T. & Laland, K. N. (2010) Why copy others? Insights from the social learning strategies tournament. Science (New York, N.Y.) 328(5975):208–13. doi: 10.1126/science.1184719.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richerson, P. J. & Boyd, R. (2005) Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sasaki, T. & Biro, D. (2017) Cumulative culture can emerge from collective intelligence in animal groups. Nature Communications 8(1):15049. doi: 10.1038/ncomms15049.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whiten, A. & van Schaik, C. (2007) The evolution of animal ‘cultures’ and social intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362(1480):603.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed