Gene-culture Coevolution Research Articles

Integration patterns in host societies analysed on the basis of alphabet book content for Russian schools in limitrophe states in the first third of the twentieth century

ABSTRACT This paper examines the content of alphabet books published for Russian-speaking children in Latvia, Estonia and Poland in the 1920s and explains the nexus between socio-cultural context and representation of social environment and children’s interactions to explore strategies of adaptation offered to children. The textbooks were quantified using a target codifier. The results are embedded in the context of theories of intergenerational cultural transmission and integration of minorities. The textbooks published for Russian-speaking children in Poland and Estonia exemplify a classical postfigurative type of intergenerational transmission to ensure group cohesion protecting against assimilation. The model of transmission in alphabet books published in Latvia is based on encouraging a child to establish values and guidelines independently. Thus, Latvian alphabet books allow a child to join a network of tenuous relationships for integration into the dominant culture. Therefore, the study provides a retrospective of strategies of Russian-speaking minorities’ consolidation and integration into dominant societies.

Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study

Although the theory of memetics appeared highly promising at the beginning, it is no longer considered a scientific theory among contemporary evolutionary scholars. This study aims to compare the genealogy of memetics with the historically more successful gene-culture coevolution theory. This comparison is made in order to determine the constraints that emerged during the internal development of the memetics theory that could bias memeticists to work on the ontology of meme units as opposed to hypotheses testing, which was adopted by the gene-culture scholars. I trace this problem back to the diachronic development of memetics to its origin in the gene-centered anti-group-selectionist argument of George C. Williams and Richard Dawkins. The strict adoption of this argument predisposed memeticists with the a priori idea that there is no evolution without discrete units of selection, which in turn, made them dependent on the principal separation of biological and memetic fitness. This separation thus prevented memeticists from accepting an adaptationist view of culture which, on the contrary, allowed gene-culture theorists to attract more scientists to test the hypotheses, creating the historical success of the gene-culture coevolution theory.

North American Clovis Point Form and Performance: An Experimental Assessment of Penetration Depth

ABSTRACT In Late Pleistocene North America colonizing hunter-gatherers knapped and used Clovis fluted projectile points. During their expansion the size and shape of Clovis points changed significantly. Archaeologists know that cultural drift contributed to this variation, but is it possible that this single source could alone generate so much variation so quickly? We present the first of several experimental studies exploring whether Clovis size and shape variation results in performance differences, focusing here on how deeply different Clovis point forms penetrate a target. Our ballistics experiment demonstrates that seven different Clovis point forms penetrated the same target with different effectiveness. Even after tip cross-sectional perimeter is accounted for, there are significant differences in penetration depths between two of the point types. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that Clovis people in different times and places may have chosen specific attributes to provide them with a selective functional advantage.

Natural selection on anthropometric traits of Estonian girls

Abstract Natural selection is a key mechanism of evolution, which results from the differential reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. We describe fecundity selection on 13 anthropometric traits in a sample of 4000–10,000 of Estonian girls, who were born between 1937 and 1962 and measured at around 13 years of age. Direct selection favoured shorter, slimmer and lighter girls with smaller heads, more masculine facial and body shapes and slower rates of sexual maturation. Selection was stabilizing for weight, body mass index and face roundness. Direct selection was absent on two markers of general health and viability – handgrip strength and vital lung capacity – although these traits experience negative indirect selection due to their association with educational attainment. Similarly, indirect selection, mediated by educational attainment, accounted for a significant portion of selection for girls with smaller heads, narrower faces, and higher shoulder/hip ratios. These traits are thus subject to gene-culture coevolution, in that selection on body dimensions arises via cultural and behavioural mechanisms.

Conservation practices and the formation of vocal dialects in the endangered Puerto Rican parrot, Amazona vittata

Captive breeding is a conservation strategy that often results in behavioural changes in animals born and reared in captivity. Culturally transmitted behaviours, such as learned vocal signals, are particularly prone to the effects of captive breeding because captive animals have limited opportunities to learn these behaviours from wild animals. Changes in learned behaviour could affect the success of reintroduction programmes once captive animals are released into the wild. We tested for vocal divergence of learned calls in Puerto Rican parrots, Amazona vittata. We recorded parrots from two captive populations and two wild populations, representing all extant populations of this species. We also recorded parrots that had been translocated between populations and evaluated changes in their vocal signals over time. Fine-scale acoustic analysis revealed vocal divergence in all four populations. The geographical variation in vocal signals evolved over a time span of 10–40 years, demonstrating that cultural traits can evolve rapidly in managed parrot populations. Parrots that were translocated between populations adopted the new vocal signals. Vocal divergence in this species likely resulted from a combination of historical rearing practices, cultural drift and geographical separation. Managers should consider strategies to facilitate the acquisition of foreign vocal signals prior to release.

Population Size Limits the Coefficient of Variation in Continuous Traits Affected by Proportional Copying Error (and Why This Matters for Studying Cultural Transmission)

The accumulated copying error model (ACE) combines findings on the proportional nature of human visual perception error with cultural transmission theory. Previous studies have employed ACE to provide population-level expectations of the coefficient of variation (CV) of a continuous trait, such as the thickness of ceramic vessels. To date, empirical departures from expected CV values have been interpreted as evidence of biased cultural transmission or functional constraints without consideration for how population size might affect population-level cultural variation in the presence of proportional perception error. Here, I employ agent-based simulation experiments to investigate the ways in which population size affects the CV of a continuous cultural trait under different cultural transmission mechanisms. Results show that the CV of a continuous cultural trait is a function of its cultural equivalent N and effective population size (Ne) as well as the relative strength of cultural selection. The results also demonstrate that different combinations of N and cultural transmission yield identical CV values. The study highlights a new set of difficulties with inferring individual-level process—the mechanism(s) by which cultural information is transmitted among individuals—from population-level pattern—the CV of a continuous cultural trait. In light of these results, I identify and discuss one avenue through which we might improve our ability to infer past cultural transmission from archeological data.

Rethinking Use-Wear Analysis and Experimentation as Applied to the Study of Past Hominin Tool Use

In prehistoric human populations, technologies played a fundamental role in the acquisition of different resources and are represented in the main daily living activities, such as with bone, wooden, and stone-tipped spears for hunting, and chipped-stone tools for butchering. Considering that paleoanthropologists and archeologists are focused on the study of different processes involved in the evolution of human behavior, investigating how hominins acted in the past through the study of evidence on archeological artifacts is crucial. Thus, investigating tool use is of major importance for a comprehensive understanding of all processes that characterize human choices of raw materials, techniques, and tool types. Many functional assumptions of tool use have been based on tool design and morphology according to archeologists’ interpretations and ethnographic observations. Such assumptions are used as baselines when inferring human behavior and have driven an improvement in the methods and techniques employed in functional studies over the past few decades. Here, while arguing that use-wear analysis is a key discipline to assess past hominin tool use and to interpret the organization and variability of artifact types in the archeological record, we aim to review and discuss the current state-of-the-art methods, protocols, and their limitations. In doing so, our discussion focuses on three main topics: (1) the need for fundamental improvements by adopting established methods and techniques from similar research fields, (2) the need to implement and combine different levels of experimentation, and (3) the crucial need to establish standards and protocols in order to improve data quality, standardization, repeatability, and reproducibility. By adopting this perspective, we believe that studies will increase the reliability and applicability of use-wear methods on tool function. The need for a holistic approach that combines not only use-wear traces but also tool technology, design, curation, durability, and efficiency is also debated and revised. Such a revision is a crucial step if archeologists want to build major inferences on human decision-making behavior and biocultural evolution processes.

From Pan to Homo sapiens: evolution from individual based to group based forms of social cognition

The evolution from pre-human primates to modern Homo sapiens is a complex one involving many domains, ranging from the material to the social to the cognitive, both at the individual and the community levels. This article focuses on a critical qualitative transition that took place during this evolution involving both the social and the cognitive domains. For the social domain, the transition is from the face-to-face forms of social interaction and organization that characterize the non-human primates that reached, with Pan, a hiatus due to the centripetal effects that highly individualized behavior has on a social system. The transition is to the relation-based forms of social organization that evolved in the hominins ancestral to Homo sapiens and are universal in human societies today. For the cognitive domain, this transition involves going from behavior responding mainly to phenomenal level sensory inputs to behavior formed in accordance with the concept of a relation, initially abstracted from behavior patterns, then extending the concept of a relation beyond abstraction from behavior patterns to the concept of a relation generated recursively through constructing the relation of a relation. This extension made possible the construction of systems of relations; initially genealogical systems of relations constructed culturally using the logic of recursion, and subsequently, the symbolic, computational systems of kin term relations referred to by anthropologists as kinship terminologies. The latter are “constructed realities” in the sense this term is used by cultural anthropologists. It follows that the evolution of relation-based systems of social interaction is not adequately accounted for through population model evolutionary accounts such as the Dual Inheritance Theory of human evolution since “constructed realities” constitute collectively and publicly shared cultural knowledge rather than the individually and privately possessed knowledge that is assumed in the population model framework for human evolution.

Bioacoustic variation in Wren Troglodytes troglodytes populations on Welsh islands

ABSTRACT Capsule: Duration and peak frequency of Wren Troglodytes troglodytes songs differ between Welsh islands (Skokholm, Flat Holm, and Sully Island) and a mainland site, suggesting random or cultural divergence. Aims: The study tests for differences in bioacoustic traits in Wren song between four breeding sites. Methods: Songs from breeding male Wrens were recorded from three Welsh islands and a representative location on the local mainland. Each sonogram was measured for six variables from the whole song and two distinct phrases from the beginning and middle. The variables were measured manually using an open source acoustic tool and compared between sites using generalized linear mixed-effects models. Results: There was significant variation in song variables between island sites and the mainland. Skokholm Wren songs were significantly longer in duration than all other sites by up to 66%. Peak frequency was significantly different across all sites with Sully Island having the highest peak frequency and Skokholm the lowest. Conclusion: The differences in song duration and frequency do not directly suggest a trend associated with selective pressures such as habitat or noise, but instead may be explained by non-selective drivers such as cultural drift or local dialect formation.

Geographic variation in the duets of the Rufous-naped Wren (Campylorhynchus rufinucha) complex

Abstract Acoustic signals used in animal communication play a key role in mate attraction, species recognition, and territory defense. Variation in acoustic signals may reflect population structure, lack of gene flow, and phylogenetic relationships. In birds, the study of geographic variation in acoustic signals has been useful for elucidating potential factors involved in phenotypic divergence and for establishing species limits. However, most of the studies on geographic variation have focused on calls and solo songs, with few studies focusing on complex behaviors such as duets. In this study, we investigated the variation in the duets of the Rufous-naped Wren (Campylorhynchus rufinucha). Our results suggest that duets vary across the distribution range of the species complex, matching the 3 taxonomic groups previously suggested (rufinucha, humilis, and capistratus). We also found a marked song sexual dimorphism in 2 groups, rufinucha and humilis, that is lacking in capistratus. At the local level, we found that duets also vary among sites within groups, but less than between groups. Our results suggest that groups rufinucha and humilis sing the most similar duets, whereas capistratus performs the most divergent duets of the 3 groups. Further, when comparing duet variation across geography, we found that birds living closer to each other sing more similar duets. We suggest that the existence of 3 vocal lineages is probably the result of historical geographic isolation followed by other selective (i.e. sexual selection, social selection, habitat structure) and/or non-selective factors (i.e. drift, isolation by distance), and that variation found within groups may be the result of cultural drift or social selection.

Increased attenuation and reverberation are associated with lower maximum frequencies and narrow bandwidth of bird songs in cities

As urbanization expands globally, the communication systems of an increasing number of species are affected. Because bird song is a long-distance signal used to attract mates and defend territories, the evolution of bird song is often shaped by habitat structure and background noise. These potential drivers of song evolution are more often studied in natural areas than in urbanized areas, leaving open the question of how anthropogenic changes to the landscape are affecting the evolution of bird song. One songbird that persists in both urbanized and rural areas in North America is the White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys). Our previous work demonstrates that increased background noise in cities and in natural habitats affects acoustic adaptation in this species. However, we lack information about how sound transmits in urban and rural habitats. Because cities tend to have different physical properties than rural areas, it is pertinent to understand the influence of urban habitat structure on song evolutionary processes. Here, we test the acoustic adaptation theory and hypothesize that differences in the sound transmission properties of urban and rural habitats affect song divergence between urban and rural populations. We conducted sound transmission trials of tones from 1 to 8 kHz on 59 White-crowned Sparrow territories in three urban and three rural locations around San Francisco and Point Reyes, California, at varying heights and rates of note production. We also recorded and analyzed songs of males from each location to see if differences in signal–noise ratio, attenuation, reverberation, and distortion predicted song divergence. We found that urban locations have higher attenuation and reverberation than rural locations and urban songs tend to have short whistles, faster trills, and narrower bandwidth. These findings partially support acoustic adaptation theory, though faster trills in the city may instead be driven by cultural drift or sexual selection. Overall, our results add to a rapidly growing area of research and allow us to better understand the complexity of influences on song divergence.

Promotion or inhibition? Moral norms, anticipated emotion and employee’s pro-environmental behavior

Through applying the dual inheritance theory to organizational context, the study constructed the systematic research model based on the relationship between moral norms, moral values and pro-environmental behavior, and interpreted the influence factors of employees’ pro-environmental behavior from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. The results revealed that effect mechanisms of the congruence between injunctive moral norms and moral values on employees’ intrinsical pro-environmental behavior and extrinsical pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, based on the thoughts that emotions embody the true content of individual adaptation psychology to norms in the process of behavior selection, both anticipated pride and anticipated guilt were incorporated into the above mechanisms and descriptive moral norm as the boundary condition for the congruence of “injunctive moral norms-moral values” to affect employees’ anticipated pride and anticipated guilt. Through investigating 954 employees of firms, the results showed that the congruence of “injunctive moral norms-moral values” promoted employees’ intrinsical pro-environmental behavior positively, anticipated pride and anticipated guilt mediated the relationship between the congruence of “injunctive moral norms-moral values” and intrinsical pro-environmental behavior. Descriptive moral norms negatively moderated the positive effect of congruence of “injunctive moral norms-moral values” and anticipated pride. The moderating effect of low descriptive moral norms was stronger than that of high descriptive moral norms in detailed. The results found some interesting insights, which were of great theoretical and managerial significance.

Resting-state brain network properties mediate the association between the oxytocin receptor gene and interdependence

ABSTRACT While an increasing number of behavioral findings have provided gene-culture coevolution accounts of human development, whether and how the brain mediates gene-culture associations remain unresolved. Based on the Culture-Behavior-Brain-Loop Model and the recent finding of associations between the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR, rs53576) and a cultural trait (i.e., interdependence) across populations, we tested the hypothesis that resting-state brain network properties mediate the relationship between OXTR rs53576 and interdependence. G and A allele carriers of OXTR rs53576 were scanned during a resting state using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and completed questionnaires to estimate their interdependence cultural values. We identified significant genotype effects on the local network metrics of the right hippocampus and its functional connectivity with the medial prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, basal ganglia and thalamus. The local network metrics of the right hippocampus and its functional connectivity with the basal ganglia and thalamus were correlated with interdependence. Moreover, both the degree of the right hippocampus and its functional connectivity with the basal ganglia and thalamus mediated the relationship between OXTR and interdependence. Our results provide brain imaging evidence for a key function of the brain in mediating the relationship between genes and culture.

WEIRD Politics: Towards a Theory of Cooperative Grammatical Performance

A grammar is a set of functionally articulated rules that constrain semiotic (meaningful) behavior into ‘correct’ chains or syntagms. In certain grammatical ‘games,’ participants take turns to build cooperatively an intersubjective syntagm that, if well formed, outputs a normatively valued meaning. Such behaviors often support system structure. Such games demand a mature syntagmatic functionalism (envisioned by Ardener 1971b): Saussurean syntagmatic semiotics married to Malinowskian structural functionalism. But the first component strand derailed into trendy non-science, and the second was rejected for political reasons. This paper 1) reviews the historical reasons for the missed opportunity; 2) examines the broad social universe of syntagmatic games; 3) proposes theory and methods to move syntagmatic functionalism forward; 4) illustrates by analyzing the hospitality game of Torguud nomadic herders in Mongolia; 5) explains how this grammar reproduces the Torguud economic/ecological adaptation; and 6) verbally models the selective pressures, acting on both context and content biases in gene-culture coevolution, and embedded in prestige/political processes, that likely cobbled this grammar together. Anthropologists need not choose anymore between totalizing theoretical perspectives or wall themselves inside competing silos; we may attempt a seamless articulation of semiotics, functionalism, thickly descriptive ethnography, and gene-culture (dual-inheritance) coevolutionary analysis—as Clifford Geertz hoped.

Addressing Social-Ecological Systems Across Temporal and Spatial Scales: A Conceptual Synthesis for Ethnobiology

The aim of this article is to develop an integrative conceptual framework for addressing social-ecological systems across different spatial and temporal scales. Ethnobiologists study social-ecological systems through the lens of heterogeneous disciplines from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Despite the integrative ambitions of the field, ethnobiology often remains fragmented through research programs that emphasize different methods and scales. This article proposes a conceptual synthesis of three processes of (1) cognitive processing, (2) cultural transmission, and (3) biocultural evolution. We also discuss how social negotiation is embedded in them. By showing how these different processes interact across different spatial and temporal scales, the article develops a framework for ethnobiological scholarship that can address complex dynamics in social-ecological systems.

París, California y la búsqueda por una teoría del cambio cultural

The debate on the possibility of an evolutionary theory of cultural change has heated up, over the last years, due to the supposed incompatibilities between the two main theoretical proposals in the field: dual inheritance theory and cultural epidemiology. The former, first formulated in the 1980’s by a group of biologists and anthropologists mostly hosted at Californian universities, supports an analogy between genetic inheritance and cultural transmission. Cultural epidemiology, more recently formulated by Dan Sperber and his collaborator (mostly hosted at Parisian universities), denies the defensibility of such an analogy and put forward a partially alternative model. But how much do these proposals actually differ with each other? In this article, I shall argue that less than what cultural epidemiologists use to think.

La especie que somos. Thomas Reid como precursor de la coevolución genocultural

Thomas Reid (1710-1796) fue un filósofo ilustrado escocés que delineó una concepción muy rica y completa de la naturaleza humana, para concluir que ésta es muy especial. Si bien pudo haberse llegado a esta naturaleza por mera evolución biológica y conductual, al ser ella tan especial, no cabe duda de que su evolución también habría continuado de manera muy peculiar; un modo que plausiblemente daría lugar a la coevolución genocultural tan reivindicada por los estudiosos actuales de la naturaleza humana. Reid es, por consiguiente, un claro precursor de las teorías en torno a dicha coevolución.

Sense or non-sense? a critical discussion of a recent evolutionary–cognitive approach to “folk-economic beliefs”

Laypeople hold beliefs about economics and policy issues—so-called folk-economic beliefs (FEBs)—that are often wrong or misleading according to professional economists. Here, I critically discuss a recent evolutionary–cognitive approach to understanding folk-economic beliefs. According to this approach (Boyer & Petersen 2018a), some economic beliefs are more prevalent than others, because such beliefs (i.e., folk-economic beliefs) resonate with evolved features of the human mind. I refer to this as the “FEB hypothesis”. A central challenge to the FEB hypothesis, with its heavy reliance on universal cognitive features, is to explain individual and cultural differences in economic beliefs and behavior. This challenge is the starting point for the discussion. Overall, the conclusion of this paper is that the FEB hypothesis relies on unnecessarily strong and controversial theoretical assumptions (e.g., “massive modularity” and the “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness”), and that it overlooks important findings from adjacent fields, but that the FEB hypothesis, following some modifications inspired by Dual Inheritance Theory, can be integrated with robust findings from the rest of the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, as well as standard political psychology. Based on this discussion, the paper ends with brief reflections on how to correct inaccurate folk-economic beliefs.

The Roots of Human Creativity: Fire-Talks and “Hammocking” in the Runaway Species

Abstract Humans are neophile, curious, and explorative animals with impressive capabilities for creative problem-solving. I discuss some of the ultimate roots behind human creativity while reviewing two books on creativity and problem-solving. To E. O. Wilson, the driv­ing force behind creativity is our instinctive love of novelty, and creativity’s ultimate goal is “self-understanding.” I elaborate on and question this assumption. The theories of inclu­sive fitness and group selection are discussed, with Wilson in favor of the latter. Finally, the theory of gene-culture coevolution is introduced as fundamental to the unity of science and the humanities and to closing the gap between these two cultures. Eagleman and Brandt’s volume is more of an entertaining history of design and human inventiveness than a study in creativity as such. We hear about the three main operations of creative process: bending, blending, and breaking, and these operations are the primary means by which all ideas evolve, according to the authors.

The impact of population fluctuations on the spatial spread of Neolithic ceramic traditions in West Anatolia and South-East Europe

This article explores the relationship between population fluctuations and the development of similarity patterns in Neolithic ceramic assemblages from West Anatolia and south-eastern Europe. Its aim is to contribute to discussions surrounding the factors influencing material culture variation in prehistory. It compares population growth and decline rates reflected by the summed probability of radiocarbon dates to diachronic changes in the ‘Isolation-by-Distance’ (IBD) of ceramic assemblage similarities. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between long-term population fluctuations and IBD, measured as the correlation between inter-site spatial distance and Jaccard dissimilarity of ceramic assemblages. This suggests that population levels affected the spatial extent at which information regarding ceramic production and style was transmitted.These results are analyzed through discussing the influence of population size and density on cultural drift and on the spatial scales of cultural transmission. Population expansion is considered to have affected the spatial scales at which information was shared through networks and migration, while, population decline after 5900 BCE, as well as increasing the effects of drift, may have reduced the frequency of long-distance transmission, causing regional variation in ceramic traditions.