ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
The potential to infer the historical pattern of cultural macroevolution.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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4 citing papers in PubMed.
- African harps as units of cultural evolution: a cladistic analysis on their morphology.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Claude Lévi-Strauss as a humanist forerunner of cultural macroevolution studies.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Review
- Foundations of cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence test the phylogenetic inference of Viking-Age plant use.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Phylogenetic analyses increasingly take centre-stage in our understanding of the processes shaping patterns of cultural diversity and cultural evolution over time. Just as biologists explain the origins and maintenance of trait differences among organisms using phylogenetic methods, so anthropologists studying cultural macroevolutionary processes use phylogenetic methods to uncover the history of human populations and the dynamics of culturally transmitted traits. In this paper, we revisit concerns with the validity of these methods. Specifically, we use simulations to reveal how properties of the sample (size, missing data), properties of the tree (shape) and properties of the traits (rate of change, number of variants, transmission mode) might influence the inferences that can be drawn about trait distributions across a given phylogeny and the power to discern alternative histories. Our approach shows that in two example datasets specific combinations of properties of the sample, of the tree and of the trait can lead to potentially high rates of Type I and Type II errors. We offer this simulation tool to help assess the potential impact of this list of persistent perils in future cultural macroevolutionary work. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
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