Abstract
Various studies have investigated cognitive mechanisms underlying culture in humans and other great apes. However, the adaptive reasons for the evolution of uniquely sophisticated cumulative culture in our species remain unclear. We propose that the cultural capabilities of humans are the evolutionary result of a stepwise transition from the ape-like lifestyle of earlier hominins to the foraging niche still observed in extant hunter–gatherers. Recent ethnographic, archaeological and genetic studies have provided compelling evidence that the components of the foraging niche (social egalitarianism, sexual and social division of labour, extensive co-residence and cooperation with unrelated individuals, multilocality, fluid sociality and high between-camp mobility) engendered a unique multilevel social structure where the cognitive mechanisms underlying cultural evolution (high-fidelity transmission, innovation, teaching, recombination, ratcheting) evolved as adaptations. Therefore, multilevel sociality underlies a ‘social ratchet’ or irreversible task specialization splitting the burden of cultural knowledge across individuals, which may explain why human collective intelligence is uniquely able to produce sophisticated cumulative culture. The foraging niche perspective may explain why a complex gene-culture dual inheritance system evolved uniquely in humans and interprets the cultural, morphological and genetic origins of Homo sapiens as a process of recombination of innovations appearing in differentiated but interconnected populations.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.
Highlights
Human cumulative culture [1,2,3,4,5,6] differs from the culture in other primates in that it more extensively accumulates over generations without loss, a property described as directional or ‘ratchet’ effect [7]
We show how the hunter–gatherer foraging niche provided the adaptive environment for the evolution of cognitive mechanisms and network-based collective intelligence underlying human cumulative culture
We argue that the foraging niche and its components are the explanation for the evolution of human unique cumulative culture
Summary
Human cumulative culture [1,2,3,4,5,6] differs from the culture in other primates in that it more extensively accumulates over generations without loss, a property described as directional or ‘ratchet’ effect [7]. The fabric of society created by the human foraging niche set the human evolutionary path apart from non-human apes by increasing cooperative ties among kin, affinal kin and unrelated individuals (box 3), as well as promoting specialization, high mobility, fluid sociality and interdependence between family units in open-ended multilevel networks [11,96]. Based on evidence from extant hunter–gatherers, we propose that the foraging niche created the social environment and selective pressures for the evolution of cognitive mechanisms widely recognized as underlying human cumulative culture Such mechanisms include transmission fidelity, teaching, cultural specialization, recombination and ratcheting. We conclude that while teaching may be occasionally observed in other great apes, the social structure of hunter–gatherers including pair bonding, shared reproductive interests and cooperation with unrelated individuals reduces costs and increases the benefits of teaching, facilitating the learning of more complex technologies and social norms. The evolution of a complex ‘network memory’ is a distinguishing feature of a human collective intelligence intrinsically linked to cultural accumulation
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