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Determinants of Cultural Evolutionary Rates

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Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans Volume 1

Part of the book series: Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series ((RNMH))

Abstract

The cultural Moran model is a simple stochastic model of birth, social learning, and death in a finite population, which assumes that one individual is born at a time, who then engages in social learning from the older individuals of the population, followed by the death of one individual other than the newborn. Using this model, we propose two different theoretical definitions for the cultural evolutionary rate. The first applies to the successive fixation of many discrete cultural traits, and the second to the change of one continuous cultural trait. Taking the case of random oblique transmission (a randomly chosen older individual is copied) as the baseline, we compare the effects of greater innovativeness and increased population size on the cultural evolutionary rate. With individuals capable of direct bias (a particular variant of a cultural trait is preferred and an older individual carrying that variant is identified and copied), the innovation rate is shown to be at least as important as—and in some cases much more so than—the population size in determining the cultural evolutionary rate. Moreover, the cultural evolutionary rate is predicted to increase as the number of acquaintances from whom social learning can occur increases, with the possible implication that a cultural trait that is normally acquired early in life may evolve more slowly than one that is normally acquired later. In addition, we show that one-to-many transmission (one older individual serves as the teacher to many novices) does not in itself have any effect on the cultural evolutionary rate. However, when the teacher is more innovative than others, increased population size has a small decelerating effect.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Marc Feldman for helpful comments. This research was supported in part by Monbukagakusho grant 22101004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Organization for the Strategic Coordination of Research and Intellectual Properties, School of Interdisciplinary Mathematical Sciences, Meiji University, 4-21-1 Nakano, Nakano-ku, Tokyo, 164-8525, Japan

    Kenichi Aoki

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  1. Kenichi Aoki
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Correspondence to Kenichi Aoki .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute, Kochi University of Technology, Kami-shi, Kochi, Japan

    Takeru Akazawa

  2. Tokyo, Japan

    Yoshihiro Nishiaki

  3. Tokyo, Japan

    Kenichi Aoki

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Aoki, K. (2013). Determinants of Cultural Evolutionary Rates. In: Akazawa, T., Nishiaki, Y., Aoki, K. (eds) Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans Volume 1. Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54511-8_12

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