Synthesis in the human evolutionary behavioural sciences

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 understand this diversity. In this introductory article, we provide a background to the debate surrounding how best to understand behavioural diversity using evolutionary models of human behaviour. In particular, we examine how diversity has been viewed by the main subdisciplines within the human evolutionary behavioural sciences, focusing in particular on the human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution approaches. In addition to differences in focus and methodology, these subdisciplines have traditionally varied in the emphasis placed on human universals, ecological factors and socially learned behaviour, and on how they have addressed the issue of genetic variation. We reaffirm that evolutionary theory provides an essential framework for understanding behavioural diversity within and between human populations, but argue that greater integration between the subfields is critical to developing a satisfactory understanding of diversity.

Human behavioral evolutionary studies tend to interpret behavioral diversity in terms of either "culture" or ecology. Although human behavioral ecology and cultural evolution seem to be different fields, their protagonists often taking different approaches and generating different conclusions, they are in fact 2 kinds of explanation that are hard to tell apart in the real world. Many studies of the evolution of human behavior situate behavior in the context of ecological, cultural, and social environments. The task now is to test explicit evolutionary models against real-world data, preferably on different scales. Cultural phylogenetics and social network analysis have been employed to help in this task, used within the framework of behavioral ecology.

On trial again: sociobiology et al.

Theopsych: A Psychological Science Primer for Theologians

Cognitive Mapping and the Origin of Language and Mind

Previous articleNext article No AccessNew Biological BooksOrigins of the Modern Mind. Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Merlin Donald Harry J. JerisonHarry J. Jerison Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 67, Number 4Dec., 1992 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/417877 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 34Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1992 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Merlin Donald Précis of Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 737–748.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032647Michael A. Arbib From cooperative computation to man/machine symbiosis, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 748–749.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032659Derek Bickerton Putting cognitive carts before linguistic horses, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 749–750.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032660C. Loring Brace “Pop science” versus understanding the emergence of the modern mind, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 750–751.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032672Bruce Bridgeman, Margarita Azmitia Mimetic culture and modern sports: A synthesis, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 751–752.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032684Philip G. Chase Archaeology and the cognitive sciences in the study of human evolution, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 752–753.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032696Andy Clark Symbolic invention: The missing (computational) link?, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 753–754.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032702Thomas L. Clarke A natural history of the mind: A guide for cognitive science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 754–755.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032714Alan Costall The place of cognition in human evolution, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 755–755.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032726Vilmos Csányi Human evolution: Emergence of the group-self, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 755–756.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032738Jeffrey Cynx, Stephen J. Clark Ethological foxes and cognitive hedgehogs, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 756–757.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0003274XJ. B. Deregowski What about pictures?, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 757–758.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032751R. I. M. Dunbar The modern mind: Its missing parts?, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 758–759.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032763Jerome A. Feldman From mimesis to synthesis, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 759–759.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032775James H. Fetzer Evolution needs a modern theory of the mind, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 759–760.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032787Liane M. Gabora Cultural transitions occur when mind parasites learn new tricks, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 760–761.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032799K. J. Gilhooly Working memory and its extensions, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 761–762.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032805John Halverson Mythos and logos, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 762–762.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032817P. J. Hampson From mimetic to mythic culture: Stimulus equivalence effects and prelinguistic cognition, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 763–763.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032829Harry J. Jerison The evolved mind, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 763–764.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032830Leonard D. Katz The gradual evolution of enhanced control by plans: A view from below, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 764–765.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032842Aarre Laakso Language equals mimesis plus speech, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 765–766.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032854Rudi Lutz Lessons from evolution for artificial intelligence?, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 766–766.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032866Alexander Marshack Correct data base: Wrong model?, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 767–768.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032878Robert W. Mitchell, H. Lyn Miles Apes have mimetic culture, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 768–768.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0003288XH. C. Plotkin Hunting memes, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 768–769.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032891Jocelyn Penny Small Memory, text and the Greek Revolution, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 769–770.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032908Evan Thompson Language, thought and consciousness in the modern mind, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 770–771.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0003291XMichael Tomasello It's imitation, not mimesis, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 771–772.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032921Jacques Vauclair, Joël Fagot Can a Saussurian ape be endowed with episodic memory only?, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 772–773.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032933Christopher Wills Stages versus continuity, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 773–773.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032945Thomas Wynn Archaeological evidence for mimetic mind and culture, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 774–774.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032957Jiajie Zhang External representation: An issue for cognition, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 774–775.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032969Merlin Donald On the evolution of representational capacities, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no.44 (Feb 2010): 775–791.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032970

The evolutionary anthropology of political leadership

Evolutionary demography is a community of researchers in a range of different disciplines who agree that “nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of demography” (Carey and Vaupel 2005). My focus here is a subset of this research (henceforth ‘evolutionary demography’ or ‘evolutionary anthropology’) that originated in anthropology in the late 1970s and which typically examines micro-level phenomena concerning reproductive decision-making and the evolutionary processes generating observed patterns in reproductive variation. Scholars in this area tend to be more involved in long-term anthropological fieldwork than any other area of the evolutionary sciences. But card-carrying anthropologists are declining among their number as researchers increasingly come from other backgrounds in the biological and social sciences, with an associated decline in the contribution of ethnographic work. Most practitioners identify with the sub-field of human behavioral ecology – the application of sociobiological principles to human behavior – and distinguish themselves from the sister fields of evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution. Human behavioral ecology has been criticized for abstracting away the details of both culture and psychology in its focus on adaptive explanations of reproductive behavior, and for its commitment to ultimate over proximate causation. This chapter explores these critiques. Inspired by EA Hammel’s seminal paper “A theory of culture for demography” (Hammel 1990), I examine how the culture concept is used in evolutionary research. Like Hammel, I argue that a theory of culture for evolutionary demography requires engaging more seriously with (and in) ethnographic work. I highlight some challenging examples to motivate discussion about adaptive reproduction and natural fertility. Going further, I advocate for cultural evolution as an integrative framework for bringing both culture and psychology into the core of evolutionary demography research. This will involve expanding our theoretical and conceptual toolkits: (1) building and testing proximate mechanistic models, (2) delineating and evaluating causal claims at multiple levels of analysis and time scales, and (3) exploring co-evolution or feedback between demography and culture.

This paper has three goals:()) to define the anthropological subfield of human behavioral ecology (HBE) and characterize recent progress in this research tradition; (2) to address Joseph's (2000) critique of HBE from the perspective of an advocate of that field; € and (3) to suggest features that make for effective criticism of research traditions. (1) HBE attempts to understand intra- and inter-societal diversity in human behavior as the product of species-wide adaptive goals which must be realized in highly diverse, socio-environmental circum- stances. Theoretically, HBE draws selectively from neo-Darwinism and its cultural-evolutionary analogs, from micro-economics, and from elements of formal decision and game theory. Applications generally use simple, formal models as heuristic devices for generating testable hypotheses about resource use, reproductive and social behavior, and life history traits. (2) Using Kuhn's (1977) and McMullin's (1983) criteria for assessing progress in a research tradition, I examine Joseph's review of HBE, indicating the several points on which we agree and the greater number for which I believe her criticisms are misplaced or in error. (3) Finally, I try to describe general features of effective critique, in the sense of critical commentary that enables the advance of scientific understanding through collective scholarly effort. Such criticism will be necessary if we are to sort out the relative strengths and potential contributions of the several research traditions in human ecology (e.g., cultural ecology, historical ecology, political ecology, etc.).

Articulating Babel: An approach to cultural evolution

We examine the relationship between niche construction theory (NCT) and human behavioral ecology (HBE), two branches of evolutionary science that are important sources of theory in archeology. We distinguish between formal models of niche construction as an evolutionary process, and uses of niche construction to refer to a kind of human behavior. Formal models from NCT examine how environmental modification can change the selection pressures that organisms face. In contrast, formal models from HBE predict behavior assuming people behave adaptively in their local setting, and can be used to predict when and why people engage in niche construction. We emphasize that HBE as a field is much broader than foraging theory and can incorporate social and cultural influences on decision-making. We demonstrate how these approaches can be formally incorporated in a multi-inheritance framework for evolutionary research, and argue that archeologists can best contribute to evolutionary theory by building and testing models that flexibly incorporate HBE and NCT elements.

Cultural evolutionary theory and human behavioural ecology offer different, but compatible approaches to understanding human demographic behaviour. For much of their 30 history, these approaches have been deployed in parallel, with few explicit attempts to integrate them empirically. In this paper, we test hypotheses drawn from both approaches to explore how reproductive behaviour responds to cultural changes among Mosuo agriculturalists of China. Specifically, we focus on how age at last birth (ALB) varies in association with temporal shifts in fertility policies, spatial variation and kinship ecologies. We interpret temporal declines in ALB as plausibly consistent with demographic front-loading of reproduction in light of fertility constraints and later ages at last birth in matrilineal populations relative to patrilineal ones as consistent with greater household cooperation for reproductive purposes in the former. We find little evidence suggesting specific transmission pathways for the spread of norms regulating ALB, but emphasize that the rapid pace of change strongly suggests that learning processes were involved in the general decline in ALB over time. The different predictions of models we employ belie their considerable overlap and the potential for a synthetic approach to generate more refined tests of evolutionary hypotheses of demographic behaviour.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

Systems theory is one way to anticipate key issues to bridge the gap between idea and reality, policy and implementation. As a key purpose of this book is to examine access strategies and policies in order to develop positive system level change, there is a need for theoretical interrogation of systems. As a starting point, a key framework is Bronfenbrenner’s (The ecology of human development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1979) well-recognised ecological theory of systems used in developmental, educational and community psychology, where he distinguishes a range of different system level interactions, ranging from microrelations in the immediate setting to meso-, exo- and macrosystem levels. Key strengths in Bronfenbrenner’s (The ecology of human development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1979; Developmental ecology through space and time: a future perspective. In: Moen P, Elder G, Luscher K, Bronfenbrenner U (eds) Examining lives in context: perspectives on the ecology of human development. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp 619–647, 1995) systems focus are discussed.

Phylogenetic trees are a central tool for studying language evolution and have wide implications for understanding cultural evolution as a whole. For example, they have been the basis of studies on the evolution of musical instruments, religious beliefs and political complexity. Bayesian phylogenetic methods are transparent regarding the data and assumptions underlying the inference. One of these assumptions—that languages change independently—is incompatible with the reality of language evolution, particularly with language contact. When speakers interact, languages frequently borrow linguistic traits from each other. Phylogenetic methods ignore this issue, which can lead to errors in the reconstruction. More importantly, they neglect the rich history of language contact. A principled way of integrating language contact in phylogenetic methods is sorely missing. We present contacTrees, a Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer for language evolution. The model efficiently infers the phylogenetic tree of a language family and contact events between its clades. The implementation is available as a package for the phylogenetics software BEAST 2. We apply contacTrees in a simulation study and a case study on a subset of well-documented Indo-European languages. The simulation study demonstrates that contacTrees correctly reconstructs the history of a simulated language family, including simulated contact events. Moreover, it shows that ignoring contact can lead to systematic errors in the estimated tree height, rate of change and tree topology, which can be avoided with contacTrees. The case study confirms that contacTrees reconstructs known contact events in the history of Indo-European and finds known loanwords, demonstrating its practical potential. The model has a higher statistical fit to the data than a conventional phylogenetic reconstruction, and the reconstructed tree height is significantly closer to well-attested estimates. Our method closes a long-standing gap between the theoretical and empirical models of cultural evolution. The implications are especially relevant for less documented language families, where our knowledge of past contacts and linguistic borrowings is limited. Since linguistic phylogenies have become the backbone of many studies of cultural evolution, the addition of this integral piece of the puzzle is crucial in the endeavour to understand the history of human culture.

Studies in cultural evolution have uncovered many types of social learning strategies that are adaptive in certain environments. The efficiency of these strategies also depends on the individual characteristics of both the observer and the demonstrator. We investigate the relationship between intelligence and the ways social and individual information is utilised to make decisions in an uncertain environment. We measure fluid intelligence and study experimentally how individuals learn from observing the choices of a demonstrator in a 2-armed bandit problem with changing probabilities of a reward. Participants observe a demonstrator with high or low fluid intelligence. In some treatments they are aware of the intelligence score of the demonstrator and in others they are not. Low fluid intelligence individuals imitate the demonstrator more when her fluid intelligence is known than when it is not. Conversely, individuals with high fluid intelligence adjust their use of social information, as the observed behaviour changes, independently of the knowledge of the intelligence of the demonstrator. We provide evidence that intelligence determines how social and individual information is integrated in order to make choices in a changing uncertain environment.