Abstract
Culture can be produced and maintained by convergent transformation, without copying or selection involved.
Highlights
The overwhelming majority of formal models in cultural evolution assume that culture is realised though repeated ‘transmission’, and transmission is a process based on copying and selection
Having elaborated the key notions of stability and convergent transformation, we present three formal models, providing evidence for three main findings: (1) Stability over time at the population level can be achieved through different processes
In this way our models complement some other, ongoing research agendas, namely those that examine how convergent transformation and selection can interact with one another (Claidière & Sperber, 2007; Claidière, 2009; Claidière et al, 2018), and how convergent transformation influences the subsequent co-evolution of culture and cognition (Kirby et al, 2007; Griffiths et al, 2008; Thompson et al 2016)
Summary
The richness and diversity of human cultures has been long documented by anthropologists (Benedict, 1934; Murdock, 1981; Brown, 1991; Ember et al, 1998), and biologists have observed and described behavioural traditions in several non-human species (Whiten et al, 1999; Rendell & Whitehead, 2001; Laland & Galef, 2009; Danchin et al, 2018; Aplin, 2019). We present a series of stochastic simulations that compare and contrast the effects of convergent transformations with the effects of other hypothesised causes of cultural stability, in particular those inspired by the comparison with biological evolution such as faithful transmission (copying), random error and transmission biases In this way our models complement some other, ongoing research agendas, namely those that examine how convergent transformation and selection can interact with one another (Claidière & Sperber, 2007; Claidière, 2009; Claidière et al, 2018), and how convergent transformation influences the subsequent co-evolution of culture and cognition (Kirby et al, 2007; Griffiths et al, 2008; Thompson et al 2016). In Model 3, we extend our approach to generate a rubric for identifying cases of cultural transmission where convergent transformation is likely to have played a significant role, based on its signature in empirical records
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