Department of Communications, History, and Philosophy, Texas A&M University-San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA.
Evol Anthropol. 2021 Jan;30(1):40-49. doi: 10.1002/evan.21865. Epub 2020 Sep 28.
The sharp distinction between biological traits and culturally based traits, which had long been standard in evolutionary approaches to behavior, was blurred in the early 1980s by mathematical models that allowed a co-dependent evolution of genetic transmission and cultural information. Niche-construction theory has since added another contrast to standard evolutionary theory, in that it views niche construction as a cause of evolutionary change rather than simply a product of selection. While offering a new understanding of the coevolution of genes, culture, and human behavior, niche-construction models also invoke multivariate causality, which require multiple time series to resolve. The empirical challenge lies in obtaining time-series data on causal pathways involved in the coevolution of genes, culture, and behavior. This is a significant issue in archeology, where time series are often sparse and causal behaviors are represented only by proxies in the material record.
长期以来，生物特征与文化特征之间的鲜明区别一直是进化行为研究的标准，而 20 世纪 80 年代初的数学模型模糊了这种区别，这些模型允许遗传传递和文化信息的共同依存进化。此后，生态位构建理论为标准进化理论增添了另一个对比，因为它将生态位构建视为进化变化的原因，而不仅仅是选择的产物。生态位构建模型虽然为基因、文化和人类行为的共同进化提供了新的理解，但也涉及多元因果关系，这需要多个时间序列来解决。实证挑战在于获得涉及基因、文化和行为共同进化的因果途径的时间序列数据。这在考古学中是一个重大问题，因为时间序列通常很稀疏，而且因果行为仅由物质记录中的代理来表示。
