0278-4165/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Inc. A doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2010.10.003 ⇑ Corresponding author. Fax: +1 310 206 7833. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Perrea Brantingham). Hunter–gatherers mobility regimes are often treated as discrete adaptive strategies. Here we present a model of forager mobility which treats collectors and foragers as two ends of a continuous spectrum. We s...

The gradual cumulative cultural evolution of locally adaptive technologies has played a crucial role in our species’ rapid expansion across the globe. Until recently, human artifacts were not obviously more complex than those made by organisms that lack cultural learning and have limited cognitive capacities. However, cultural evolution creates adaptive tools much more rapidly than genetic evol...

OBJECTIVES Cultural variability (CV) is introduced as an overlooked dimension of cultural identity development pertaining to emphasizing and de-emphasizing the influence of a single cultural identity (i.e., cultural influence [CI]) on daily interactions and behaviors. The Cultural IDentity Influence Measure (CIDIM) is introduced as a novel measure of CI and CV, and hypothesis-driven validation ...

In recent years, far from arguing that evolutionary approaches to our own species permit us to describe the fundamental character of human nature, a prominent group of cultural evolutionary theorists has instead argued that the very idea of 'human nature' is one we should reject. It makes no sense, they argue, to speak of human nature in opposition to human culture. The very same sceptical argu...

The gradual cumulative cultural evolution of locally adaptive technologies has played a crucial role in our species’ rapid expansion across the globe. Until recently, human artifacts were not obviously more complex than those made by organisms that lack cultural learning and have limited cognitive capacities. However, cultural evolution creates adaptive tools much more rapidly than genetic evol...

To explain emergent cultural phenomena, this paper argues, it is inevitable to understand the evolution of complex human cognitive adaptations and their links to the populationlevel dynamics of cultural variation. On the one hand, the process of cultural transmission is influenced and constrained by humans’ evolved psychology; people tend to acquire some cultural variants rather than others. On...

A general linear model of familial resemblance is described which allows for cultural transmission from parent to offspring, polygenic inheritance, phenotypic assortative mating, common environment, maternal and paternal effects, and threshold effects. Three special cases are described in detail which are particularly useful when data are only available about a few classes of relatives reared i...

Observable patterns of cultural variation are consistently intertwined with demic movements, cultural diffusion, and adaptation to different ecological contexts [Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981) Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach; Boyd and Richerson (1985) Culture and the Evolutionary Process]. The quantitative study of gene-culture coevolution has focused in particul...

Communication depends on accurate reception of signals by receivers, and selection acts on signals to transmit efficiently through the environment. Although learnt signals, such as birdsong, vary in their transmission properties through different habitats, few studies have addressed the role of cultural selection in driving acoustic adaptation. Here, we present a test of the hypothesis that son...

The study of language evolution has benefitted enormously from the contribution made by computational simulations of the cultural transmission of language over the past ten years. However, we still have not explored or confirmed these findings empirically in a human population. This thesis presents a novel experimental method for investigating the emergence and cultural transmission of language...