The cultural evolution of technology: Facts and theories

The gradual cumulative cultural evolution of locally adaptive technologies has played a crucial role in our species’ rapid expansion across the globe. Until recently, human artifacts were not obviously more complex than those made by organisms that lack cultural learning and have limited cognitive capacities. However, cultural evolution creates adaptive tools much more rapidly than genetic evolution creates morphological adaptations. Human tools are finely adapted to local conditions, a fact that seems to preclude explanations of cultural adaptation based on cognitive attractors. Theoretical work indicates that culture can lead to cumulative adaptation in a number of different ways. There are many important unsolved problems regarding the cultural evolution of technology. We do not know how accurate cultural learning is in the wild, what maintains cultural continuity through time, or whether cultural adaptation typically requires the cultural transmission of causal understandings.