Abstract
Many animals use culture, the ability to learn from others, but only humans create complex culture. A laboratory experiment tests which characteristics of our social networks give us this capacity. See Letter p.389 An important human attribute is the capacity for cumulative culture — the ability to pass on learned behaviours from generation to generation. Theoretical work has suggested that population size is an important factor in cultural development, with information being eroded in populations that are too small and added to in populations that are sufficiently large. Working with groups of volunteers playing an experimental cultural game, Maxime Derex et al. find evidence to support this prediction. They show that, during an iterated process, small groups are unable to maintain the ability to complete a complex task or improve on a simple one, whereas larger groups can improve both types of task over time.
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