Stone toolmaking and the evolution of human culture and cognition.
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TLDR
An initial attempt at a systematic method for describing the complexity and diversity of these early technologies is presented and results suggest that rates of Palaeolithic culture change may have been underestimated and that there is a direct relationship between increasing technological complexity and Diversity.Abstract:
Although many species display behavioural traditions, human culture is unique in the complexity of its technological, symbolic and social contents. Is this extraordinary complexity a product of cognitive evolution, cultural evolution or some interaction of the two? Answering this question will require a much better understanding of patterns of increasing cultural diversity, complexity and rates of change in human evolution. Palaeolithic stone tools provide a relatively abundant and continuous record of such change, but a systematic method for describing the complexity and diversity of these early technologies has yet to be developed. Here, an initial attempt at such a system is presented. Results suggest that rates of Palaeolithic culture change may have been underestimated and that there is a direct relationship between increasing technological complexity and diversity. Cognitive evolution and the greater latitude for cultural variation afforded by increasingly complex technologies may play complementary roles in explaining this pattern.read more
Citations
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Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation
Gergely Csibra,György Gergely +1 more
TL;DR: It is proposed that the cognitive mechanisms that enable the transmission of cultural knowledge by communication between individuals constitute a system of ‘natural pedagogy’ in humans, and represent an evolutionary adaptation along the hominin lineage.
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Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence.
Peter J. Richerson,Ryan Baldini,Adrian Bell,Kathryn Demps,Karl Frost,Vicken Hillis,Sarah Mathew,Emily K. Newton,Nicole Naar,Lesley Newson,Cody T. Ross,Paul E. Smaldino,Timothy M. Waring,Matthew R. Zefferman +13 more
TL;DR: This target article sketches the evidence from five domains that bear on the explanatory adequacy of cultural group selection and competing hypotheses to explain human cooperation and presents evidence, including quantitative evidence, that the answer to all of the questions is “yes” and argues that it is not clear that any extant alternative tocultural group selection can be a complete explanation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Experimental evidence for the co-evolution of hominin tool-making teaching and language
Thomas J. H. Morgan,Thomas J. H. Morgan,Natali Uomini,Luke Rendell,Laura Chouinard-Thuly,Laura Chouinard-Thuly,Sally E. Street,Hannah Lewis,Hannah Lewis,Catharine P. Cross,Cara L. Evans,R. Kearney,I. de la Torre,Andrew Whiten,Kevin N. Laland +14 more
TL;DR: The results support the hypothesis that hominin reliance on stone tool-making generated selection for teaching and language and imply that teaching or proto-language may have been pre-requisites for the appearance of Acheulean technology.
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The evolution of primate general and cultural intelligence
TL;DR: The findings question the independence of cognitive traits and do not support ‘massive modularity’ in primate cognition, nor an exclusively social model of primate intelligence, as well as an across-species general intelligence that includes elements of cultural intelligence.
References
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