Download Dynamics and adaptation in human cumulative culture

Dynamics and adaptation in human
cumulative culture
Developing a scientific understanding for the origin and dynamics of cultural diversity requires integrating insights from both the
natural and social sciences. Hence, CULTAPTATION, a scientific project funded by the EC (European Commission) 6th Framework
Programme (New and Emerging Sciences & Technologies-PATH-043434), brought together biologists, economists, archaeologists,
anthropologists, historians, psychologists and mathematicians from four universities in Sweden, Italy and the U.K. to work
in collaboration towards generating a scientific foundation of this issue. The work has been theoretical and mathematical as well
as empirical and experimental, and has included the staging of a major international multi-disciplinary tournament on the evolution
of culture. Some of the findings are described below.
The seemingly unique cumulative nature of human culture has been the focus of the work. This ability brings an extraordinary
potential to our species to improve its life conditions. However, human cultures also contain many elements that are neutral or even
counterproductive with respect to survival and reproduction. Such observations invite a number of questions that CULTAPTATION
was set up to address: How can maladaptive cultural practices evolve? How do biological and cultural evolutionary processes
interact to generate adaptation? What evolutionary mechanisms underlie the cumulative nature of cultural change? Can the tools,
models and terminology of biological evolution be adopted to shed light on cultural phenomena?
We have concluded that the evolution of cognitive abilities to discard maladaptive traits has been crucial to the origin of human
culture. This finding also has important implications for the field of mathematical modeling, since many commonly considered social
learning strategies do not facilitate cumulative change. The relationship between population dynamics and culture has also been
studied; demonstrating that under certain conditions cumulative, cultural evolution and population size will mutually reinforce each
other while under other conditions culture can affect population size negatively.
The study of the spread and accumulation
of adaptive and maladaptive traits when
individuals repeatedly learn from each
other has highlighted important differences
between biological and cultural evolution:
cultural evolution cannot as easily be
predicted as biological evolution, and the
same variant may not be favoured in these
two processes. In cultural evolution at
least two factors determine the “success”
of variants: their ability to diffuse and
their utility to the individual. For instance,
a maladaptive variant may quickly spread
but later decrease in popularity.
A number of analytical results describe the
rate of cultural evolution and the nature of
cultural equilibria as a function of population size, social learning abilities and creativity. An important contribution of the project is a general theoretical/mathematical
The cumulative nature of human culture led to the evolution of agriculture
framework for exploring almost any kind of
cumulative process, allowing us to model
human cultural evolution in a way that can account for many aspects of the complexity that arise when culture is accumulated.
By considering systems of culture, rather than single cultural elements, we have taken a step towards developing more realistic
models. The key mechanism here is the dependency of cultural traits on another one: the likelihood that a cultural trait will be
invented depends on what other traits are present.
© European Union, 2011. This document should not be considered as representative of the Commission’s official position.
Social learning is a capacity of humans that make cumulative culture possible. We have shown that individuals must possess several cultural parents in order for culture to be maintained and grown. We have also found that the conditions under which cumulative
culture can evolve are far more stringent than the corresponding conditions for simple culture, because in cumulative culture it is
more difficult to limit the spread of maladaptive traits.
We have also investigated how imitation of others can shape
the collective behaviour of groups. Models of decision-making
originally developed in economics were extended to include the
effects of social interactions, assuming that individuals tend
to agree with those that are perceived as similar to themselves.
Novel mathematical techniques have been developed to fit these
models to data.
A major international tournament that investigated the most
effective means of learning from others has been completed.
The tournament provided new insights into why social learning is
widespread in nature, and why humans happen to be so good at it.
An experimental economics laboratory was established to gain
insight into how humans use and integrate information obtained
from others and from their own experiences, and to explore the
evolution of adaptive and maladaptive social contracts and
to clarify various issues of the role of individuals in cultural
accumulation. We found that people seem to be biased against
conformity and for individual exploration, both of which will work
in favour of accumulation of culture. In other experiments we
showed that if groups develop institutions to assist within-group
cooperation, then more effective institutions evolve in those
groups that are more cooperative from the outset, thus creating
a spiral that helps explain the cultural evolution of very complex
institutions among humans.
Further, experimental studies of cumulative cultural learning
in nonhuman primates have been carried out, supporting the
hypothesis that the relevant cognitive deficit inhibiting nonhuman
primates to exhibit cumulative culture is the absence of imitation
and teaching.
Cultural evolution of foraging and law codes, respectively, has
been studied empirically. Cumulative evolution was detected
in food culture in Neolithic and Iron Age populations as well as
in food preparation during the last 600 years (as revealed by
recipes). A general classification system of Law Codes from the
Middle East, China and Europe has been developed, revealing
cumulative processes also in the cultural evolution of law.
In short, the CULTAPTATION project has been very productive and
all objectives have been met. The original plan was to publish
29 scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals.
Instead, over 100 manuscripts have been prepared and already
64 of these are published. In spite of their different backgrounds,
the investigators have worked together closely, with great
enthusiasm and productivity. The result is a rich theoretical
framework that both scientists and social scientists admire.
Contract
CULTAPTATION
Coordinator
Stockholms universitet (SU), Sweden
Many examples of human culture are difficult
to understand in purely functional terms
MU - Mälardalen University, Sweden
Partners
USTAN - The University Court of the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom
UNIBO - University of Bologna, Italy
EC-contribution
1.961.592,07 €
Full partner and project information available on http://cordis.europa.eu/fp6/projects.htm
The coordinator provided text and pictures for the factsheet and his copyright is acknowledged
http://ec.europa.eu/research