ArticlePLoS computational biology2016
Game-Changing Innovations: How Culture Can Change the Parameters of Its Own Evolution and Induce Abrupt Cultural Shifts.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Not by Selection Alone: Expanding the Scope of Gene-Culture Coevolution.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- Phase synchronization between culture and climate forcing.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Idea engines: Unifying innovation & obsolescence from markets & genetic evolution to science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Cultural specialization as a double-edged sword: division into specialized guilds might promote cultural complexity at the cost of higher susceptibility to cultural loss.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Neuroplasticity enables bio-cultural feedback in Paleolithic stone-tool making.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Human cumulative culture and the exploitation of natural phenomena.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Underappreciated features of cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Epistasis between cultural traits causes paradigm shifts in cultural evolution.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Cultural evolution by capital accumulation.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Cultural selection shapes network structure.Science advances · 2019Article
- Current and potential roles of archaeology in the development of cultural evolutionary theory.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- High-magnitude innovators as keystone individuals in the evolution of culture.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Integrative studies of cultural evolution: crossing disciplinary boundaries to produce new insights.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Innovation: an emerging focus from cells to societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Innovation and the growth of human population.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Greater than the sum of its parts? Modelling population contact and interaction of cultural repertoires.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of the most puzzling features of the prehistoric record of hominid stone tools is its apparent punctuation: it consists of abrupt bursts of dramatic change that separate long periods of largely unchanging technology. Within each such period, small punctuated cultural modifications take place. Punctuation on multiple timescales and magnitudes is also found in cultural trajectories from historical times. To explain these sharp cultural bursts, researchers invoke such external factors as sudden environmental change, rapid cognitive or morphological change in the hominids that created the tools, or replacement of one species or population by another. Here we propose a dynamic model of cultural evolution that accommodates empirical observations: without invoking external factors, it gives rise to a pattern of rare, dramatic cultural bursts, interspersed by more frequent, smaller, punctuated cultural modifications. Our model includes interdependent innovation processes that occur at different rates. It also incorporates a realistic aspect of cultural evolution: cultural innovations, such as those that increase food availability or that affect cultural transmission, can change the parameters that affect cultural evolution, thereby altering the population's cultural dynamics and steady state. This steady state can be regarded as a cultural carrying capacity. These parameter-changing cultural innovations occur very rarely, but whenever one occurs, it triggers a dramatic shift towards a new cultural steady state. The smaller and more frequent punctuated cultural changes, on the other hand, are brought about by innovations that spur the invention of further, related, technology, and which occur regardless of whether the population is near its cultural steady state. Our model suggests that common interpretations of cultural shifts as evidence of biological change, for example the appearance of behaviorally modern humans, may be unwarranted.
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