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Welcome to the Pubget Medical Subject Headings (MESH) browser. Click on a topic or subtopic below to explore related papers. In the gold box is the most recent paper about the current MESH term, and below are 20 related papers.
Cultural Evolution (0):
Recent article
Cultural Evolution
Abstract
We report on the lithic assemblage and geological context for the Kokiselei 4 archaeological site from the Nachukui formation (West Turkana, Kenya) that bears characteristic early Acheulian tools and pushes the first appearance datum for this stone-age technology back to 1.76 Myr ago. Moreover, co...
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PMID: 21886161
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
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Abstract
Theory in Biosciences (129)2-3 2010
Abstract
We examine the hypothesis that demographic changes caused cultural "cumulative adaptive evolution" and as such the emergence of modern symbolic behavior. This approach usefully explains the evolution of utilitarian skills and tools, and the creation of symbols to identify groups. However, it does no...
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PMID: 20556543
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Theory in Biosciences (129)2-3 2010
Abstract
We question the demographic assumption which is sometimes made when a tree-building approach has been taken to a set of cultures or languages, namely that the resulting tree is also representative of a bifurcating population history. Using historical census data relating to Gaelic- and English-speak...
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PMID: 20532998
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Abstract
Abstract
Abstract
We organized a computer tournament in which entrants submitted strategies specifying how to use social learning and its asocial alternative (for example, trial-and-error learning) to acquire adaptive behavior in a complex environment. Most current theory predicts the emergence of mixed strategies th...
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PMID: 20378813
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Abstract
Abstract
We show that market integration (measured as the percentage of purchased calories) positively covaries with fairness while community size positively covaries with punishment. Participation in a world religion is associated with fairness, although not across all measures. These results suggest that m...
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PMID: 20299588
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We practice public health. Human cultures and technologies have modified life on this planet and have coevolved with myriad other species, including microorganisms; plant and animal sources of food; invertebrate vectors of disease; and intermediate hosts among birds, mammals, and nonhuman primates....
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PMID: 19966311
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
New Zealand Medical Journal (123)1320 2010
Abstract
Research into the possible genetic basis of health inequalities between different ethnic or racial groups raises many scientific, ethical and political concerns. Proponents of such research point to the possible benefits for marginalised groups of understanding genetic influences on health outcomes;...
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PMID: 20720605
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Psychological Science (20)12 2009
Abstract
We show that human participants' cumulative learning is not always reliant on sources of social information commonly assumed to be essential. Seven hundred participants were organized into 70 microsocieties and completed a task involving building a paper airplane. We manipulated the availability of...
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PMID: 19891752
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Theory in Biosciences (128)4 2009
Abstract
We investigate the dependence of the number C of distinct coexisting cultures on the area A in Axelrod's model, the culture-area relationship, through extensive Monte Carlo simulations. We find a non-monotonous culture-area relation, for which the number of cultures decreases when the area grows bey...
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PMID: 19424735
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Current Anthropology (50)5 2009
Abstract
Feasting has been proposed as the major context and impetus behind the intensification of production leading to the domestication of plants and animals. This article examines the way feasting contributes to fitness in traditional societies through the reduction of risks involving subsistence, reprod...
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PMID: 20642144
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Psychological Review (116)4 2009
Abstract
Cultural evolutionary theory is an interdisciplinary field in which human culture is viewed as a Darwinian process of variation, competition, and inheritance, and the tools, methods, and theories developed by evolutionary biologists to study genetic evolution are adapted to study cultural change. It...
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PMID: 19839691
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Evolutionary-psychology hypothesizes how character traits, emotions and behavioral patterns present in modern-day humans, have evolved to contribute to the survival and procreation of our ancestors. Stevens and Price (2000) wrote, "Darwinian paradigm is the bedrock on which allã biological sciences...
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PMID: 20070054
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Psychological Reports (105)1 2009
Abstract
The concept of memes is analyzed, and its applicability to suicidology explored. Proposals are made for possible memes implicated in suicidal behavior. A classification of suicidal memes is proposed and the relationship between memes and archetypes of suicide is discussed. It is suggested that the t...
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PMID: 19810429
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
This paper aims at analysing the distribution of surnames over the Alto Adige-Südtirol, which is an Italian alpine sub-region coinciding with the province of Bolzano-Bozen. Two thirds of the Alto Adige-Südtirol inhabitants are German mother-tongue, whereas the remaining one third is Italian mo...
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PMID: 19739467
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
I tested the prediction that observed facial mobility is positively correlated with body size in a comparative sample of nonhuman anthropoids. Facial mobility, or the variety of facial movements a species can produce, was estimated using a novel application of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)....
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PMID: 18711735
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
In his main work, "On the origin of species", Darwin has refrained from discusion of the origin of man; be only mentioned that his theory would "throw light" on this problem. This famous Darwin's phrase turned out to be one of the most succesful scientific predictions. In the present paper some of t...
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PMID: 19891409
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We argue that there are good reasons to view sports as culturally evolved signaling systems that serve a function similar to (biological) courtship rituals in other animals. Our approach combines the insights of evolutionary psychology, which states that biological adaptations determine the boundari...
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PMID: 19168940
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Abstract
Review. Theoretical and empirical evidence for the impact of inductive biases on cultural evolution.
Abstract
We address this question through a detailed investigation of transmission chains, in which each person passes information to another along a chain. We review mathematical and empirical evidence that shows that under general conditions, and across experimental paradigms, the information passed along...
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PMID: 18801717
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We explore how experimental studies of cultural transmission in adult humans can address general questions regarding the 'who, what, when and how' of human cultural transmission, and consequently inform a theory of human cultural evolution. Three methods are discussed. The transmission chain method,...
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PMID: 18801720
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We provide a summary of these articles (seven articles on the experimental exploration of cultural transmission and three articles on the role of gene-culture coevolution in shaping human behaviour) and a personal view of some promising lines of development suggested by the work summarized here....
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PMID: 18799420
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We explore this mismatch by focusing on three key ideas: cognitive niche construction; cognitive modularity; and the existence (or otherwise) of an evolved universal human nature. An appreciation of the power and scope of the first, combined with consequently more nuanced visions of the latter two,...
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PMID: 18801719
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We describe our motivations for developing experimental methods for studying cumulative cultural evolution and review the results we have obtained using these techniques. The results that we describe have provided insights into understanding the outcomes of cultural processes at the population level...
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PMID: 18799419
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We review the existing corpus of 33 such studies in fishes, birds, rodents and primates and offer the first systematic analysis of the diversity of experimental designs that have arisen. We distinguish three main transmission designs and seven different experimental/control approaches, generating an...
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PMID: 18799418
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
I will illustrate how this gene-culture coevolution has played a critical role in human evolution. These studies explore (i) the evolution of handedness, (ii) sexual selection with a culturally transmitted mating preference, and (iii) cultural niche construction and human evolution. These analyses s...
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PMID: 18799415
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We argue, supported by a formal model, that an explanatory account that involves some role for cultural evolution has profound implications for our understanding of the biological evolution of the language faculty: under a number of reasonable scenarios, cultural evolution can shield the language fa...
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PMID: 18801718
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We argue that community evolved sign systems undergo a process of communicative selection and adaptation that promotes optimized sign systems. This results from the interplay between sign diversity and a global alignment constraint; pairwise interaction introduces a range of competing signs and the...
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PMID: 18799421
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Naturwissenschaften (95)10 2008
Abstract
We formulated two hypotheses on the highly specific nature of this association: (1) Ant presence should be correlated with a marked reduction in the amount of herbivory on the plant foliage; (2) ant activity should be consistent with the "optimal defense" theory predicting that the most vulnerable a...
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PMID: 18496661
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosoc...
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PMID: 18832637
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We examine these forces experimentally and show that arbitrary symbolic markers, though initially meaningless, evolve to play a key role in cultural group formation and ingroup favoritism because they enable a population of heterogeneous individuals to solve important coordination problems. This pro...
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PMID: 18818361
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Acta Paediatrica (97)9 2008
Abstract
Through the ages, male circumcision has been differently represented, and at present an interesting representation is born following the natural evolution of society. CONCLUSION: Based on the fact that the foreskin is not a defect, the impact of male circumcision is on the child's rights and its rol...
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PMID: 18616631
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We introduce an experimental paradigm for studying the cumulative cultural evolution of language. In doing so we provide the first experimental validation for the idea that cultural transmission can lead to the appearance of design without a designer. Our experiments involve the iterated learning of...
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PMID: 18667697
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Theory in Biosciences (127)3 2008
Abstract
We suggest that a science of morality/ethics can benefit from adopting a cultural evolution or gene-culture coevolution approach, which treats culture as a second, separate evolutionary system that acts in parallel to biological/genetic evolution. This cultural evolution approach brings with it a se...
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PMID: 18357481
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Trends in Genetics (24)8 2008
Abstract
Evolutionary theorists since Darwin have been interested in the parallels and interactions between biological and cultural evolution. Recent applications of empirical techniques originally developed to analyze molecular genetic data to linguistic data offer new insights into the historical evolution...
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PMID: 18585817
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
EMBO Reports (9 Suppl 1) 2008
Abstract
Animal Cognition (11)3 2008
Abstract
We present a first experiment designed to examine chimpanzees' capacity for cumulative social learning. Eleven young chimpanzees were presented with a foraging device, which afforded both a relatively simple and a more complex tool-use technique for extracting honey. The more complex 'probing' techn...
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PMID: 18204869
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We study the co-evolution of culturally inherited altruistic helping behaviors and two alternative cultural transmission rules for such behaviors. We find that conformist transmission, where individuals within groups tend to copy prevalent cultural variants (e.g., beliefs or values), has a strong ad...
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PMID: 18420241
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We present a demographic model that describes the feedbacks between food supply, human mortality and fertility rates, and labor availability in expanding populations, where arable land area is not limiting. This model provides a quantitative framework to describe how environment, technology, and cul...
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PMID: 18439637
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symb...
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PMID: 18511690
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Abstract
Abstract
We analyze whether two sets of related cultural traits, one tested against the environment and the other not, evolve at different rates in the same populations. Using functional and symbolic design features for Polynesian canoes, we show that natural selection apparently slows the evolution of funct...
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PMID: 18287028
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Mathematical and simulation models of cultural transmission in a population where individuals may differ in their social status are developed. High-status individuals are assumed to be more influential to others but no more fertile or viable than low-status individuals. Analysis of the models sugges...
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PMID: 18006031
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We used vocabulary data from three of the world's major language groups-Bantu, Indo-European, and Austronesian-to show that 10 to 33% of the overall vocabulary differences among these languages arose from rapid bursts of change associated with language-splitting events. Our findings identify a gener...
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PMID: 18239118
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Suppl 47)s47 2008
Abstract
We review the essential morphology and physiology of the primate visual system to look for features that might constrain evolutionary switches, and we find that the pattern of variation within and among primate groups in eye size, corneal size, retinal morphology, and opsin distribution are all cons...
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PMID: 19003895
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
Abstract
Darwin's evolution theory is fundamental for modern biology. But the logic of evolutionary development seems to have a wider context. Several observations and psychological investigations show convincingly that the extent of the development of human psyche is a continuation of the biological evoluti...
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PMID: 19025049
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.
Abstract
We studied the coevolution of social learning and conformist bias in a modified version of the Henrich and Boyd [1998. The evolution of conformist transmission and the emergence of between-group differences. Evol. Hum. Behav. 19, 215-241] model that nevertheless preserves its essential features. The...
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PMID: 17561216
PDF is available here.
PDF is available here.