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Why is culture adaptive?
... En un primer ensayo, Boyd y Richerson (1981) destacaron que uno de los rasgos más llamativos de la especie humana es su diversidad de estrategias adaptativas. Como tal, la tesis de la cultura como mecanismo adaptativo está respaldada en sólida evidencia etnográfica y conforma la base de la THD (Boyd, 2018;Boyd et al., 2011a;Boyd & Richerson, 1983b, 1995bRicherson, 2017a;. No obstante, esta teoría difiere no solo porque ubica el carácter adaptativo de la cultura en un marco antropológico, junto a conceptos como normas sociales, aprendizaje cultural o cooperación (Boyd, 2018;Boyd et al., 2011b;Boyd & Richerson, 2009a;, sino además porque discute cómo la cultura se convirtió en un mecanismo adaptativo humano. ...
"Por un lado, la presente tesis cumple un objetivo principal: analizar la influencia de la cultura en la evolución humana según la THD [teoría de la herencia dual]. Para ello, cumple tres objetivos secundarios: a) analizar su estructura conceptual; b) explorar sus campos de aplicación; y c) discutir sus debates con otras propuestas." / "On the one hand, this thesis fulfills a main objective: to analyze the influence of culture on human evolution according to the DIT [dual inheritance theory]. For this, it fulfills three secondary objectives: a) analyze its conceptual structure; b ) explore their fields of application, and c) discuss their debates with other proposals."
... Así, la THD postula que las instituciones sociales y la tecnología son adaptaciones culturales porque evolucionan culturalmente, no genéticamente (Henrich & McElreath, 2007). Hoy, la existencia de tales mecanismos se respalda en sólida evidencia etnográfica y forma las bases de la THD (Boyd, 2018;Boyd & Richerson, 1981, 1983, 1995Henrich & Henrich, 2010;Richerson, 2017;Richerson & Boyd, 2000). ...
"La evolución humana es un campo científico muy discutido. Diversas teorías hacen de su literatura muy diversa y compleja. Al reescribir la ciencia de la evolución humana, una de esas propuestas se ha sumado al debate: la teoría de la herencia dual, formulada por Robert Boyd y Peter Richerson. Para los antropólogos, biólogos y psicólogos que la desarrollan la cultura no es un elemento accesorio, sino fundamental para la evolución de nuestra especie. Se trata de una teoría científica que reconoce el impacto de la cultura en la evolución humana. ¿Qué evidencias la respaldan?"
... Indeed, although initially culture only concerned humans, as always, the concept soon percolated through a vast array of taxa. Starting in the late 1970s, arguments were published showing that there is a potential conflict between cultural and genetic inheritance that could bring populations to equilibria that would be impossible to reach with the sole inheritance of sequencic information Boyd & Richerson, 1983Feldman & Cavalli-Sforza, 1984. ...
Human culture changes over time and varies across space. Two main approaches to study cultural evolution have developed in the last fifty years: human behavioural ecology and a suite of perspectives centred on the role of cultural transmission. The latter are often confusingly referred to with the name of the phenomenon they are trying to explain, ‘cultural evolution’. We argue that this is unhelpful and is generating confusion, including the claim that human behavioural ecology disregards cultural evolution. The aim of behavioural ecology is to explain human behaviours, and the vast majority of them are at least to some extent cultural. In addition, culture forms part of the ecology that determines the costs and benefits associated with adopting a behaviour. Thus, human behavioural ecologists have studied cultural evolution from the very beginning, even though they have not focussed on social learning. We explore three examples in detail: kinship systems, religious institutions, and witchcraft belief. We then use the framework offered by Tinbergen’s [1963, Z Tierpsychol, 20(4), 410-433] four evolutionary questions about behaviour to explain how human behavioural ecology and cultural transmission approaches can fruitfully coexist and complement each other. Moreover, we discuss several difficulties with cultural transmission approaches and highlight how the human behavioural ecological view of cultural evolution sometimes diverges from them. We conclude by suggesting that the field can move forward and achieve greater synthesis by exploring how selective processes acting on biological fitness differ from those acting on cultural fitness – and how the two might interact in the cultural evolution of human behaviours.
Link to preprint: https://osf.io/u47tw/
... When this process occurs through interactions with peers, it is called horizontal learning (Dragolov & Boehnke, 2015;Tam, 2015; for conceptualization see Bandura & Walters, 1963;Baumrind, 1967;Boyd & Richerson, 1982, 1983Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981;Reed et al, 2010). Although we dynamically experience these fluctuations, they have been elusive in experimental settings. ...
Social interactions require fluid self-concepts to adapt to real-time dynamics – in theory. In practice, fluid processes have been difficult to experimentally quantify. Active self-concepts theoretically respond to social contexts while stable self-concepts are context-independent. Such fluctuations in ‘typical’ adults have rarely been reported. Self-concept research has broad implications; inducing and quantifying active fluctuations is long-sought-after in social psychology. However, since their inception, self-concepts were studied using bicultural participants (e.g., cultural priming experiments) and characterized in psychiatric patients (e.g., ‘fragmented self’). By increasing methodological saliency and ecological validity of popular methods, three studies tested an adapted scale and social interaction priming procedure for differentiating between active and stable self-concepts. Psychometrics, reproducibility and clinical relevance are compared to a common measure of bicultural self-concept fluidity using optimized statistics. Pre-Study controls (N=42) characterize repetition effects. Study 1: Active self-concepts are suppressed in convenience sample of 62 W.E.I.R.D. students. Study 2: Diverse, locally-representative and randomly-sampled adults (N=43) replicates Study 1 findings. Study 3: Patients with schizophrenia (N=27) hold opposing self-concepts, adopting their interlocutor’s while keeping their own. Four distinct flexibility phenotypes emerge. These studies are the first to quantify active self-concepts. This article precedes a manuscript series interrogating replicability, neural activations and cultural-clinical implications.
... During its evolutionary process, successful non-biological, cultural responses to the challenges of environmentinvented thanks to the gradually growing mental capacities -were transmitted to the next generations via directly or indirectly corresponding gene mutations. For this reason, basic mental facilities are genetically encoded, inherited and so universally shared within the population of AMH (Boyd & Richerson 1983, Boyd & Richerson 1987, Boyd & Richerson 2008. ...
In this book an interpretation of two Indo-European mythological themes within their complex context is presented. Considered are especially historical and socio-cognitive aspects of their background. By means of this approach an innovative interpretation of an otherwise traditional mythological structure is proposed as well as a new one introduced.
In the first part of the book the matter of well-known Indo-European creation myth is discussed. It is hypothetically concluded that Proto-Indo-European cultural area originated in prehistoric Cargo Cult. Certain motives and themes of Indo-European creation myth are interpreted as possible semantic relics of Pre-Proto-Indo-European Cargo Cult ideology.
In the second part an attempt to present the brand new Indo-European mythological structure, so called witch-hunting myth, is made. Analysed are various local manifestations of narrative dealing with the conflict of elites with the demonic army led by a female witch. A basic sujet pattern is identified and then interpreted as an outcome of archaic Indo-European societies’ social and gender setting.
... Furthermore, culture creates environments that can select genetic variants, including social systems that exert social selection by rewarding those who conform to cultural rules or punishing those who don't. By the early 1980s, the gene-cultural coevolution position was well articulated (Boyd and Richerson 1983;Campbell 1975;Pulliam and Dunford 1980;Richerson and Boyd 1978), and Wilson (1978: 235-6, n.) associated the term 'human nature' with his position in the debate. ...
... Following plant biology, the domain of cultural inheritance claimed that a genocentric vision of inheritance could not explain human evolution (Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981Richerson, 1983 and1985;Feldman & Cavalli-Sforza, 1984) and cultural processes have been documented in various animals (insects: Alem et al., 2016;whales: Allen et al., 2013;great tits: Aplin et al., 2015;orangutans: van Schaik et al., 2003;chimpanzee: Whiten et al., 1999chimpanzee: Whiten et al., , 2011Whiten, 2005Whiten, , 2007Whiten, , 2011Whiten & Mesoudi, 2008;reviews in Avital & Jablonka, 2000;Danchin et al., 2004). Discrepancies between genetics and culture in whales (Whitehead, 1998;Rendell & Whitehead, 2001;Rosenbaum et al., 2002) and dolphins (Krutzen et al., 2005;Kopps et al., 2014) were documented, while cultural inheritance was claimed to be the only explanation for some human population genetic patterns (Heyer, Sibert & Austerlitz, 2005;review in Laland, Odling-Smee & Myles, 2010). ...
After decades of debate about the existence of non‐genetic inheritance, the focus is now slowly shifting towards dissecting its underlying mechanisms. Here, we propose a new mechanism that, by integrating non‐genetic and genetic inheritance, may help build the long‐sought inclusive vision of evolution. After briefly reviewing the wealth of evidence documenting the existence and ubiquity of non‐genetic inheritance in a table, we review the categories of mechanisms of parent–offspring resemblance that underlie inheritance. We then review several lines of argument for the existence of interactions between non‐genetic and genetic components of inheritance, leading to a discussion of the contrasting timescales of action of non‐genetic and genetic inheritance. This raises the question of how the fidelity of the inheritance system can match the rate of environmental variation. This question is central to understanding the role of different inheritance systems in evolution. We then review and interpret evidence indicating the existence of shifts from inheritance systems with low to higher transmission fidelity. Based on results from different research fields we propose a conceptual hypothesis linking genetic and non‐genetic inheritance systems. According to this hypothesis, over the course of generations, shifts among information systems allow gradual matching between the rate of environmental change and the inheritance fidelity of the corresponding response. A striking conclusion from our review is that documented shifts between types of inherited non‐genetic information converge towards epigenetics (i.e. inclusively heritable molecular variation in gene expression without change in DNA sequence). We then interpret the well‐documented mutagenicity of epigenetic marks as potentially generating a final shift from epigenetic to genetic encoding. This sequence of shifts suggests the existence of a relay in inheritance systems from relatively labile ones to gradually more persistent modes of inheritance, a relay that could constitute a new mechanistic basis for the long‐proposed, but still poorly documented, hypothesis of genetic assimilation. A profound difference between the genocentric and the inclusive vision of heredity revealed by the genetic assimilation relay proposed here lies in the fact that a given form of inheritance can affect the rate of change of other inheritance systems. To explore the consequences of such inter‐connection among inheritance systems, we briefly review published theoretical models to build a model of genetic assimilation focusing on the shift in the engraving of environmentally induced phenotypic variation into the DNA sequence. According to this hypothesis, when environmental change remains stable over a sufficient number of generations, the relay among inheritance systems has the potential to generate a form of genetic assimilation. In this hypothesis, epigenetics appears as a hub by which non‐genetically inherited environmentally induced variation in traits can become genetically encoded over generations, in a form of epigenetically facilitated mutational assimilation. Finally, we illustrate some of the major implications of our hypothetical framework, concerning mutation randomness, the central dogma of molecular biology, concepts of inheritance and the curing of inherited disorders, as well as for the emergence of the inclusive evolutionary synthesis.
... When culture is defined as 'shared knowledge' [26][27][28][29][30], knowledge, like culture, can be viewed as adaptive: "It seems likely that the range of diversity in individual versions of the 'common' culture is not simply a social imperfection, but an adaptive necessity: a crucial resource that can be drawn on and selected from in cultural change" [31], p.88). These approaches to knowledge would suggest that local knowledge is often highly functional, ensuring individual and community well-being [32,33]. In his review ' An Anthropology of Knowledge, ' Barth [29] noted: "We all live lives full of raw and unexpected events, and we can grasp them only if we can interpret them-cast them in terms of our knowledge". ...
Background
Diet and nutrition-related behaviours are embedded in cultural and environmental contexts: adoption of new knowledge depends on how easily it can be integrated into existing knowledge systems. As dietary diversity promotion becomes an increasingly common component of nutrition education, understanding local nutrition knowledge systems and local concepts about dietary diversity is essential to formulate efficient messages. Methods
This paper draws on in-depth qualitative ethnographic research conducted in small-scale agricultural communities in Tanzania. Data were collected using interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation in the East Usambara Mountains, an area that is home primarily to the Shambaa and Bondei ethnic groups, but has a long history of ethnic diversity and ethnic intermixing. ResultsThe data showed a high degree of consensus among participants who reported that dietary diversity is important because it maintains and enhances appetite across days, months and seasons. Local people reported that sufficient cash resources, agrobiodiversity, heterogeneity within the landscape, and livelihood diversity all supported their ability to consume a varied diet and achieve good nutritional status. Other variables affecting diet and dietary diversity included seasonality, household size, and gender. Conclusions
The results suggest that dietary diversity was perceived as something all people, both rich and poor, could achieve. There was significant overlap between local and scientific understandings of dietary diversity, suggesting that novel information on the importance of dietary diversity promoted through education will likely be easily integrated into the existing knowledge systems.
... Therefore, practice of veiling would regulate female sexuality in favor of males' paternity, elicit paternal investment and support lowpromiscuity and marriage-centered reproductive strategies (Pazhoohi, under review). Consequently, guarding efficiently the mate from the mate poachers and rivals, the practice of veiling has been culturally adaptive (Boyd & Richerson, 1983, 1985. ...
This theoretical paper argues, firstly, that eye contact could serve as a method of signaling attraction and, secondly, could be misinterpreted and lead into sexual coercion. On the basis of these discussions, it is therefore hypothesized that eye covering practices in some cultures serve as mate guarding strategies to decrease the probability of infidelity and sexual coercion by potential mate poachers. In other words, eye concealing practices could be considered a mate retention tactic used by males to prevent rival males from misinterpreting the eye gaze of their spouses, or to prevent their spouses from sending genuine signals of sexual interest, as men cannot misinterpret what they cannot see.
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