Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, 107 Swallow Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2010 Dec 12;365(1559):3797-806. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0012.
Cultural traits have long been used in anthropology as units of transmission that ostensibly reflect behavioural characteristics of the individuals or groups exhibiting the traits. After they are transmitted, cultural traits serve as units of replication in that they can be modified as part of an individual's cultural repertoire through processes such as recombination, loss or partial alteration within an individual's mind. Cultural traits are analogous to genes in that organisms replicate them, but they are also replicators in their own right. No one has ever seen a unit of transmission, either behavioural or genetic, although we can observe the effects of transmission. Fortunately, such units are manifest in artefacts, features and other components of the archaeological record, and they serve as proxies for studying the transmission (and modification) of cultural traits, provided there is analytical clarity over how to define and measure the units that underlie this inheritance process.
文化特质长期以来一直被人类学家用作传播单位，表面上反映了表现出这些特质的个体或群体的行为特征。在传播之后，文化特质作为复制单位，因为它们可以通过个体内部的重组、丧失或部分改变等过程，作为个体文化库的一部分进行修改。文化特质与基因相似，因为生物体复制它们，但它们本身也是复制者。虽然我们可以观察到传播的效果，但从来没有人见过行为或遗传的传播单位。幸运的是，这些单位在考古记录的人工制品、特征和其他组成部分中表现出来，并且它们可以作为研究文化特质传播（和修改）的代理，只要在如何定义和衡量作为这种遗传过程基础的单位方面有明确的分析。
