ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2009
Inferring population histories using cultural data.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Postmarital residence rules and transmission pathways in cultural hitchhiking.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Cultural transmission, networks, and clusters among Austronesian-speaking peoples.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Insights into drivers of mobility and cultural dynamics of African hunter-gatherers over the past 120 000 years.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- A description and sensitivity analysis of the ArchMatNet agent-based model.PeerJ. Computer science · 2023Article
- Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
- Expanding the measurement of culture with a sample of two billion humans.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- On the absence of a correlation between population size and 'toolkit size' in ethnographic hunter-gatherers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Integrating the signatures of demic expansion and archaic introgression in studies of human population genomics.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2016Review
- Article
- Behavioural variation in 172 small-scale societies indicates that social learning is the main mode of human adaptation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Toward a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2014Review
- The evolution of traditional knowledge: environment shapes medicinal plant use in Nepal.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2014Article
- Article
- Considering the role of time budgets on copy-error rates in material culture traditions: an experimental assessment.PloS one · 2014Article
- Inheritance, ecology and the evolution of the canoes of east Oceania.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2011Article
- On the trails of markers and proxies: the socio-cognitive technologies of human movement, knowledge assemblage, and their relevance to the etiology of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.Chinese journal of cancer · 2011Review
- The cophylogeny of populations and cultures: reconstructing the evolution of Iranian tribal craft traditions using trees and jungles.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
- On the shape and fabric of human history.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
- Is horizontal transmission really a problem for phylogenetic comparative methods? A simulation study using continuous cultural traits.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
- Understanding ancient hominin dispersals using artefactual data: a phylogeographic analysis of Acheulean handaxes.PloS one · 2009Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
The question as to whether cultures evolve in a manner analogous to that of genetic evolution can be addressed by attempting to reconstruct population histories using cultural data. As others have argued, this can only succeed if cultures are isolated enough to maintain and pass on a central core of traditions that can be modified over time. In this study we used a set of cultural data (canoe design traits from Polynesia) to look for the kinds of patterns and relationships normally found in population genetic studies. After developing new techniques to accommodate the peculiarities of cultural data, we were able to infer an ancestral region (Fiji) and a sequence of cultural origins for these Polynesian societies. In addition, we found evidence of cultural exchange, migration and a serial founder effect. Results were stronger when analyses were based on functional traits (presumably subject to natural selection and convergence) rather than symbolic or stylistic traits (probably subject to cultural selection for rapid divergence). These patterns strongly suggest that cultural evolution, while clearly affected by cultural exchange, is also subject to some of the same processes and constraints as genetic evolution.
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