Towner et al. [1] question the methods and the theoretical framework of our study of behavioural variation among Native American tribes of Western North America [2]. Here we show that their concerns are unfounded and that our results are robust. We also clarify the theoretical issues that motivated our paper, and explain why it is critical to disentangle the role of ecology and cultural inherit...

 Abstract Humans learn and share information on a massive scale through the use of culture. In this paper, we will outline the mechanisms of evolutionary cultural change, evaluate their role in ecologically destructive feedback loops, and conclude by describing how we might harness the mechanisms of cultural evolution to favor ecologically and socially beneficial change. A virtue of the scienc...

Human beings persist in an extraordinary range of ecological settings, in the process exhibiting enormous behavioural diversity, both within and between populations. People vary in their social, mating and parental behaviour and have diverse and elaborate beliefs, traditions, norms and institutions. The aim of this theme issue is to ask whether, and how, evolutionary theory can help us to under...

Studies of populations subjected to specific environmental stressors such as hypoxia, hypothermia, or seasonal hypocaloric intake are fundamentally different from studies of populations undergoing the _stress of culture change. While the field-work is no easier in the former cases than in the latter, at least there are clear-cut models from ecology, physiology, and nutrition predicting how thes...

Late-twentieth-century archaeological perspectives upon historical ecology in the Pacific islands emphasized anthropogenic impacts documented particularly in studies of vegetation change and deforestation, and the depletion or extinction of native faunas. More complex views of cultural-environmental relationships are now emerging. Biological invasions are seen as occurring more variably than in...

A growing body of theoretical and empirical research has examined cultural transmission and adaptive cultural behaviour at the individual, within-group level. However, relatively few studies have tried to examine proximate transmission or test ultimate adaptive hypotheses about behavioural or cultural diversity at a between-societies macro-level. In both the history of anthropology and in prese...