Demography and Cultural Innovation: a Model and its Implications for the Emergence of Modern Human Culture

ers, without committing ourselves one way or the other as to their effect on biological fitness. Nevertheless, the idea that some innovations will be less attractive to imitate and others more so, while some make only a marginal difference to existing options, seems a reasonable one. The specific aim of this article is to explore the consequences of innovations in small populations of the kind that prevailed in the world until the advent of agriculture, and which must have provided the context for the evolution of human culture. The model presented here focuses on the processes involved in the transmission and change of craft traditions, such as stone tool production. It is primarily innovation in such traditions that defines the cultural expansions of the last 50,000 years and makes them an archaeologically visible phenomenon. This focus on craft traditions has other implications, however, since it is increasingly clear that the transmission of craft traditions, as opposed to other kinds of information, has its own specific characteristics. By and large, in traditional societies craft traditions are passed on Stephen Shennan