Cultural Evolution in a Structured Population

Invasion fitness for gene-culture co-evolution in family-structured populations and an application to cumulative culture under vertical transmission.

Human evolution depends on the co-evolution between genetically determined behaviors and socially transmitted information. Although vertical transmission of cultural information from parent to offspring is common in hominins, its effects on cumulative cultural evolution are not fully understood. Here, we investigate gene-culture co-evolution in a family-structured population by studying the inv...

Syntax out of Learning: The Cultural Evolution of Structured Communication in a Population of Induction Algorithms

Editorial - Cultural Evolution in Spatially Structured Populations: a Review of Alternative Modeling Frameworks

We consider the dynamics of cultural evolution in spatially-structured populations. Most spatially explicit modeling approaches can be broadly divided into two classes: microand macro-level models. Macro-level models study cultural evolution at the population level and describe the average behavior of the considered system. Conversely, micro-level models focus on the constituent units of the sy...

Division of Labor, Economic Specialization, and the Evolution of Social Stratification

This paper presents a simple mathematical model that shows how economic inequality between social groups can arise and be maintained even when the only adaptive learning process driving cultural evolution increases individuals’ economic gains. The key assumptions are that human populations are structured into groups and that cultural learning is more likely to occur within than between groups. ...

Cumulative cultural dynamics and the coevolution of cultural innovation and transmission: an ESS model for panmictic and structured populations.

When individuals in a population can acquire traits through learning, each individual may express a certain number of distinct cultural traits. These traits may have been either invented by the individual himself or acquired from others in the population. Here, we develop a game theoretic model for the accumulation of cultural traits through individual and social learning. We explore how the ra...