Cultural evolutionary models that relate spatial and temporal patterning in artifact sequences to human social learning processes and history have made many recent advances. Specifically, these models connect evolutionary forces and social leaning mechanisms along cultural pathways with expectations that can be assessed using material culture. In this dissertation, I use an historical archaeology case study of carved New England gravestones to evaluate three different aspects of cultural transmission and artifact patterns. First, I study the role of social network structure in the transmission of cultural information among carvers organized in workshops that were principally comprised of a carver and his apprentices. The results of this study suggest that the motifs reflect widespread similarity that transcends workshop organization. However, the finer grained decorative elements that make up these motifs correspond with cultural lineages of gravestone carvers. Second, I examine the relationship between the diffusion of innovations and cultural transmission mechanisms that result in spatiotemporal patterning. The spatial patterning suggests that social contagion among consumers created brief instances of wave-like diffusion from a distinct workshop, highlighting the role of consumer choice. A review of probate payments shows that gravestones were rarely purchased from distance sources, as transport costs could be prohibitive. The spatial patterning and historic record suggest that carvers also learned from other carvers creating a hierarchical diffusion process. These two populations created a feedback mechanism that leads to complex emergent phenomena, as illustrated by the rapid and widespread adoption of the cherub motif. Third, the neutral model of stylistic variation is applied to gravestone data to examine the ways that increased consumption and an expanding carving industry led to dominant decorative motifs. This study shows that neutrality can be a fleeting and transitional state between the dominance of single decorative styles. These three studies use New England gravestones to illustrate the evolutionary forces and cultural transmission mechanisms among artifact producers and consumers, which generated the stylistic patterning we observe in the archaeological record.

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<p>The cross-cultural study of music is important to our understanding of the evolution of human biological and cultural diversity. Early comparative musicologists failed to develop rigorous scientific methods for studying this, and the modern-day fields of music cognition and ethnomusicology still lack such methods. In this thesis, I describe our attempts to design new methods for classifying and quantifying cross-cultural musical diversity and to apply these methods to the study of musical evolution and migration. Using a new method of classifying songs, we analyzed 421 songs from 16 indigenous tribes in Taiwan and the Philippines. We found striking parallels between musical and genetic diversity, both in the degree of diversity found within each culture and in the patterns of similarities between cultures. These findings suggest that music may be subject to similar processes of evolution and migration as are genes. A new, multidisciplinary, and scientifically-grounded comparative musicology may thus provide a new line of evidence to complement and integrate existing research into the complex relationship between music, biology, and culture.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts / Thesis (MA (VA)) -- Stellenbosch University, 2006. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Cultural evolution & genre: an investigation of three South African graphic narratives of the South African Border war (1975-1988) Magister in Fine Arts thesis, Department of Fine Arts, Stellenbosch University This study analyses three South African graphic narratives in the context of culture evolving in the Darwinian sense. It is deemed necessary to consider evolutionary theory in such a study of graphic narratives as it considers the development of culture as resulting from a process of evolution akin to natural selection. Special attention is paid to the theory of memetics, in the field of evolutionary epistemology, and its proposal to model cultural evolution. While this model relies on evolutionary theory, the development of culture is seen as evolving separately from biological evolution. This evolutionary perspective on culture is combined with the concepts of discourse and genre in social semiotics and media studies to investigate the changes in the depiction of the Border war in South African graphic narratives. As such this study focuses on the strategic viewpoint of cultural evolution, the role of memes in genre and its interaction with the evolution of discourse. This approach is offered as a useful method to analyse cultural artefacts. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Kulturele evolusie & genre: 'n ondersoek van drie grafiese verhale van die Suid-Afrikaanse Grensoorlog (1975-1988) Magister in Beeldende Kunste tesis, Oepat1ement Beeldende Kunste, Universiteit van Stellcnbosch Hicrdie studic ontleed drie Suid-Afrikaanse graficse verhale in die konteks van kultuur wat evolueer in die Oarwinistiese sin. Oit word belangrik gereken om evolusieteorie in so 'n studie van grafiese verhale in ag te neem aangesien die ontwikkeling van kultuur as die resultaat van 'n proses van evolusie, verwand aan natuurlike seleksie, geag word. Spesiale aandag word geskenk aan die teorie van meme, in die veld van evolusieepistemologie, en die teorie se voorstel om kulturele evolusie te modelleer. Terwyl so 'n teorie op evolusieteorie steun, word die ontwikkeling van kultuur beskou as 'n afsonderlike proses van natuurlike seleksie. Hierdie evolusienere perspektief op kultuur word verenig met die konsepte van diskoers en genre in sosiale semiotiek en media studies om die veranderende uitbeelding van die Grensoorlog in Suid-Afrikaanse gratiese verhale na te vors. Sodanig fokus hierdie studie op die strategiesc oogpunt van kulturele evolusie, die rol van meme in genre en die interaksie met die ontwikkeling van diskoers. Hierdie benadering word aangebied as 'n waardevolle metode om kulturele artefakte te ontleed.

Cultural artifacts, such as language, survive and replicate by passing from mind to mind. Cultural evolution always proceeds by an inductive process, where behaviors are never directly copied, but reverse engineered by the cognitive mechanisms involved in learning and production. I will refer to this type of evolutionary change as inductive evolution and explain how this represents a broader class of evolutionary processes that can include both neutral and selective evolution. This thesis takes a mechanistic approach to understanding the forces of evolution underlying change in culture over time, where the mechanisms of change are sought within human cognition. I define culture as anything that replicates by passing through a cognitive system and take language as a premier example of culture, because of the wealth of knowledge about linguistic behaviors (external language) and its cognitive processing mechanisms (internal language). Mainstream cultural evolution theories related to social learning and social transmission of information define culture ideationally, as the subset of socially-acquired information in cognition that affects behaviors. Their goal is to explain behaviors with culture and avoid circularity by defining behaviors as markedly not part of culture. I take a reductionistic approach and argue that all there is to culture is brain states and behaviors, and further, that a complete explanation of the forces of cultural change can not be explained by a subset of cognition related to social learning, but necessarily involves domain-general mechanisms, because cognition is an integrated system. Such an approach should decompose culture into its constituent parts and explore 1) how brains states effect behavior, 2) how behavior effects brain states, and 3) how brain states and behaviors change over time when they are linked up in a process of cultural transmission, where one person's behavior is the input to another. I conduct several psychological experiments on frequency learning with adult learners and describe the behavioral biases that alter the frequencies of linguistic variants over time. I also fit probabilistic models of cognition to participant data to understand the inductive biases at play during linguistic frequency learning. Using these inductive and behavioral biases, I infer a Markov model over my empirical data to extrapolate participants' behavior forward in cultural evolutionary time and determine equivalences (and divergences) between inductive evolution and standard models from population genetics. As a key divergence point, I introduce the concept of non-binomial cultural drift, argue that this is a rampant form of neutral evolution in culture, and empirically demonstrate that probability matching is one such inductive mechanism that results in non-binomial cultural drift. I argue further that all inductive problems involving representativeness are potential drivers of neutral evolution unique to cultural systems. I also explore deviations from probability matching and describe non-neutral evolution due to inductive regularization biases in a linguistic and non-linguistic domain. Here, I offer a new take on an old debate about the domain-specificity vs -generality of the cognitive mechanisms involved in language processing, and show that the evolution of regularity in language cannot be predicted in isolation from the general cognitive mechanisms involved in frequency learning. Using my empirical data on regularization vs probability matching, I demonstrate how the use of appropriate non-binomial null hypotheses offers us greater precision in determining the strength of selective forces in cultural evolution.

Human culture is unique in its scope and complexity and is underpinned by the social transmission of information. Successful individuals will use both social and asocial information effectively. Evolutionary theory suggests that social learning should be guided by evolved learning rules that dictate when individuals rely on social information, a literature which I review across Chapters 1 and 2, with the emphasis of chapter 2 being on conformist transmission. In this thesis I present experimental investigations of the existence and adaptive value of several such strategies in both adults (Chapter 3) and young children (Chapter 4). In all cases I find strong evidence for the existence of such biases and show that they act to increase the accuracy of decisions. In particular I show individuals are highly sensitive to even small majorities within a group of demonstrators. The youngest children (age 3) however, show little sensitivity to social information and do not use it effectively. In Chapter 5 I present an investigation into the role of social learning in the evolution of hominin lithic technology. I conclude that even the earliest hominin flaking technology is poorly transmitted through observation alone and so the widespread and longstanding persistence of such tools implies some form of teaching. Furthermore, I conclude that the stable transmission of more complex technologies would likely require teaching, and potentially symbolic communication. I also postulate a co-evolution of stone tools and complex communication and teaching. In Chapter 6 I conclude that the cultural evolutionary approach, focussing on the evolutionary consequences of social information use and treating culture as a system of inheritance partially independent of genes, seems successful in increasing our understanding of the evolution of social learning.

As idéias cotidianas influenciam a aprendizagem de conceitos científicos e afetam a educação científica da população, de maneira que é imprescindível compreender sua origem e dinâmica de transmissão para o planejamento de políticas educacionais. As teorias de evolução cultural contribuem para o entendimento da origem, fixação e distorções das idéias cotidianas em um grupo social, esclarecendo a dinâmica de propagação das idéias cotidianas. Verificar e documentar a transmissão cultural de conhecimento cotidiano exige a identificação e comparação das idéias cotidianas empregadas pelas pessoas para explicar os fenômenos naturais com os quais entram em contato, de modo a permitir a descrição de padrões. Essa comparação é viabilizada pela codificação das idéias em modelos explicativos delimitados pela descrição de determinados atributos e características da explicação. Esse procedimento torna possível a quantificação e permite o teste de hipóteses de transmissão cultural. Sabendo-se obter e comparar as concepções de uma pessoa é possível investigar toda uma comunidade, rastreando a disseminação dessas idéias, possibilitando assim o estudo da transmissão do conhecimento cotidiano através das gerações. Essa dissertação propõe um protocolo de pesquisa a ser empregado no estudo de transmissão cultural de idéias cotidianas sobre os fenômenos patológicos hereditários a ser realizado em Serrinha dos Pintos e municípios vizinhos (RN), contribuindo para a descrição da diversidade de idéias cotidianas e investigação os processos de transmissão e fixação dessas idéias ao longo das gerações. / The learning of scientific concepts is largely influenced by everyday knowledge. It is therefore necessary to understand its origins and transmission dynamics for the proper planning of educational policies. The theories of cultural evolution contribute to understanding the origin, fixation and distortions of everyday ideas within a social group, explaining the spread dynamics of everyday knowledge. Checking and documenting the cultural transmission of everyday knowledge requires the identification and comparison of ideas used by people to explain natural phenomena with which they come in contact, in order to allow the description of patterns. This comparison is possible by the consolidation of the ideas in explanatory models defined by the description of certain explanation attributes and characteristics. This procedure makes it possible to quantify and allows testing of hypotheses of cultural transmission. The proper collection and comparison of a single person\'s ideas and thoughts enables us to form an idea of the community as a whole and to track the spread of these ideas. Consequently, enables us to study the transmission of everyday knowledge through the generations. This work proposes a research protocol to be used in the study of cultural transmission of ideas on the everyday phenomena of hereditary diseases to be held in Serrinha dos Pintos and neighboring counties (RN), thus contributing to the description of the diversity of everyday ideas and research processes related to the transmission and fixation of these ideas through the generations.

Uma das características que nos distinguem de outros seres vivos é nossa cultura. Entretanto, como comportamentos não fossilizam, é difícil reconstruir o passado para gerar insights sobre por que nos tornamos o que somos hoje. Juntamente com dados etnográficos e experimentais, os modelos matemáticos têm sido utilizados para abordar a questão sobre como nossos comportamentos foram moldados pela evolução. Esta tese está dividida em duas partes. Na primeira parte, discutiremos sobre seleção multinível e sobre como o framework matemático chamado Two-level Fisher Wright (TLFW) pode nos ajudar a entender a evolução da cooperação em populações humanas. Após descrevermos o problema da cooperação através do uso de ferramentas de teoria dos jogos, revisamos algumas das teorias atuais sobre por que a cooperação evoluiu. Em seguida, empregamos o framework TLFW ao problema da emergência de altruísmo em populações de caçadores-coletores, considerando uma situação em que o conflito entre grupos direciona a seleção. Na segunda parte, abordamos o tópico de diversidade linguística e apresentamos a importância de se estudar a competição entre línguas para ajudar a preservá-las. Traçando um paralelo entre a evolução das línguas e a evolução de normas sociais, introduzimos um modelo para analisar a persistência de dialetos, quando existe competição com uma língua padrão nacional. / One of the features that distinguish human beings from other living species is our culture. However, since behaviors do not fossilize, it is difficult to reconstruct the past to get insights about why we are who we are. Along with ethnographic and experimental data, mathematical models have been used to address the question of how our behaviors were shaped by evolution. This thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part, we will discuss multilevel selection and how the mathematical framework Two-Level Fisher-Wright (TLFW) can help us to understand the evolution of cooperation in human populations. After describing the problem of cooperation by using game theory, we review some of the present theories about why cooperation has evolved. Then, we apply the TLFW framework to the problem of the evolution of altruism in populations of hunter-gatherers, considering a situation in which group conflict drives selection. In the second part, we discuss language diversity and present the importance of studying the competition between languages for helping to preserve them. By drawing a parallel between the evolution of language and social norms, we introduce a mathematical model to analyze the persistence of dialects competing against a national standard language.

Uma das características que nos distinguem de outros seres vivos é nossa cultura. Entretanto, como comportamentos não fossilizam, é difícil reconstruir o passado para gerar insights sobre por que nos tornamos o que somos hoje. Juntamente com dados etnográficos e experimentais, os modelos matemáticos têm sido utilizados para abordar a questão sobre como nossos comportamentos foram moldados pela evolução. Esta tese está dividida em duas partes. Na primeira parte, discutiremos sobre seleção multinível e sobre como o framework matemático chamado Two-level Fisher Wright (TLFW) pode nos ajudar a entender a evolução da cooperação em populações humanas. Após descrevermos o problema da cooperação através do uso de ferramentas de teoria dos jogos, revisamos algumas das teorias atuais sobre por que a cooperação evoluiu. Em seguida, empregamos o framework TLFW ao problema da emergência de altruísmo em populações de caçadores-coletores, considerando uma situação em que o conflito entre grupos direciona a seleção. Na segunda parte, abordamos o tópico de diversidade linguística e apresentamos a importância de se estudar a competição entre línguas para ajudar a preservá-las. Traçando um paralelo entre a evolução das línguas e a evolução de normas sociais, introduzimos um modelo para analisar a persistência de dialetos, quando existe competição com uma língua padrão nacional. / One of the features that distinguish human beings from other living species is our culture. However, since behaviors do not fossilize, it is difficult to reconstruct the past to get insights about why we are who we are. Along with ethnographic and experimental data, mathematical models have been used to address the question of how our behaviors were shaped by evolution. This thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part, we will discuss multilevel selection and how the mathematical framework Two-Level Fisher-Wright (TLFW) can help us to understand the evolution of cooperation in human populations. After describing the problem of cooperation by using game theory, we review some of the present theories about why cooperation has evolved. Then, we apply the TLFW framework to the problem of the evolution of altruism in populations of hunter-gatherers, considering a situation in which group conflict drives selection. In the second part, we discuss language diversity and present the importance of studying the competition between languages for helping to preserve them. By drawing a parallel between the evolution of language and social norms, we introduce a mathematical model to analyze the persistence of dialects competing against a national standard language.

Memetics is a Darwinian approach to evolution of culture proposed in late 1970s. This thesis proposes an approach to Memetics, which is an effort to overcome some of the problems involved. It is argued in this thesis that units of cultural evolution are functional abstraction of physical reality and are realized within the boundaries of our cognitive processes. The boundaries of human cognitive processes are defined by Clark and Chalmers (1998) in their extended cognition hypothesis according to which, human cognition is understood as a part of the cultural environment. Therefore human cognition and cultural environment can best be understood by studying them together. As for identifying these units, an extended functionalist approach has been proposed and an empirical cultural transmission study has been conducted and explored in the thesis.