Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group, Biosciences, University of Exeter, Penryn TR10 9FE, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Jul 5;376(1828):20200053. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0053. Epub 2021 May 17.
Here, I discuss two broad versions of human cultural evolution which currently exist in the literature and which emphasize different underlying dynamics. One, which originates in population-genetic-style modelling, emphasizes how causes some cultural variants to be favoured and gradually increase in frequency over others. The other, which draws more from cognitive science, holds that cultural change is driven by the of cultural variants by individuals in non-random and consistent directions. Despite claims that cultural evolution is characterized by one or the other of these dynamics, these are neither mutually exclusive nor a dichotomy. Different domains of human culture are likely to be more or less strongly weighted towards cultural selection or biased transformation. Identifying cultural dynamics in real-world cultural data is challenging given that they can generate the same population-level patterns, such as directional change or cross-cultural stability, and the same cognitive and emotional mechanisms may underlie both cultural selection and biased transformation. Nevertheless, fine-grained historical analysis and laboratory experiments, combined with formal models to generate quantitative predictions, offer the best way of distinguishing them. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
在这里，我讨论了目前文献中存在的两种广泛的人类文化进化版本，它们强调了不同的潜在动态。一种起源于基于群体遗传学的建模，强调了 如何导致某些文化变体受到青睐，并逐渐在其他变体中增加频率。另一种则更多地借鉴认知科学，认为文化变化是由个体在非随机和一致的方向上对文化变体的 推动的。尽管有人声称文化进化的特点是这些动态中的一个或另一个，但它们既不是相互排斥的，也不是二分法。人类文化的不同领域可能更倾向于文化选择或有偏向的转变。鉴于文化选择和有偏向的转变可能具有相同的认知和情感机制，因此在现实文化数据中识别文化动态具有挑战性，它们可能会产生相同的群体水平模式，例如方向性变化或跨文化稳定性。然而，精细的历史分析和实验室实验，结合形式模型来生成定量预测，提供了区分它们的最佳方法。本文是主题为“文化进化基础”的特刊的一部分。
