Tue 8th July, 11.00-12.30, 1.17 Dugald Stewart Building

Monica Tamariz

Cultural transmission: behaviours replicate; mental and material culture emerge

Human culture evolves, but it is also remarkably stable over time. In order to explain this stability, we need to understand how cultural information is transmitted from generation to generation. Human culture has been defined as mental information such as knowledge, beliefs, skills, values and attitudes, which is socially transmitted to new learners. However, empirically attested human social learning mechanisms such as imitation and over-imitation do not explain the transmission of mental information, but of behaviour. In order to bridge the explanatory gap between the imitation of behaviour and the stability of mental culture, I propose an evolutionary account of cultural transmission encompassing two distinct mechanisms. First, behavioural cultural patterns are replicated by new learners through the mechanisms of imitation and over-imitation as well as teaching. Second, mental (and material) representations are emergent phenomena arising in individual’s minds through the production of myriads of (replicated) behavioural patterns in context. The replication of behaviour therefore ultimately helps ensure the stability and constrains the variation of mental (and material) culture.

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