Inferring population histories using cultural data

Abstract

The question as to whether cultures evolve in a manner analogous to that of genetic evolution can be addressed by attempting to reconstruct population histories using cultural data. As others have argued, this can only succeed if cultures are isolated enough to maintain and pass on a central core of traditions that can be modified over time. In this study we used a set of cultural data (canoe design traits from Polynesia) to look for the kinds of patterns and relationships normally found in population genetic studies. After developing new techniques to accommodate the peculiarities of cultural data, we were able to infer an ancestral region (Fiji) and a sequence of cultural origins for these Polynesian societies. In addition, we found evidence of cultural exchange, migration and a serial founder effect. Results were stronger when analyses were based on functional traits (presumably subject to natural selection and convergence) rather than symbolic or stylistic traits (probably subject to cultural selection for rapid divergence). These patterns strongly suggest that cultural evolution, while clearly affected by cultural exchange, is also subject to some of the same processes and constraints as genetic evolution.

The cophylogeny of populations and cultures: reconstructing the evolution of Iranian tribal craft traditions using trees and jungles

“…For example, Tehrani & Collard (2002) noted that some of the relationships among Turkmen and rural Iranian (Tehrani & Collard 2009a,b) weaving traditions contradict written and oral histories about the tribes' origins. Similar inconsistencies have been reported in reconstructions of indigenous Californian basketry assemblages (Jordan & Shennan 2003), Siberian material culture ( Jordan & Mace 2006), Baltic stringed instruments (Temkin & Eldredge 2007) and Polynesian canoes (Rogers et al 2009). …”

Differences in Manufacturing Traditions and Assemblage-Level Patterns: the Origins of Cultural Differences in Archaeological Data

“…However, it is also worth reemphasizing that both selective biases and drift (i.e., stochastic processes) will have the capacity to influence and instigate such long-term change in such variations as a direct result of their proximate behavioral basis Eerkens and Lipo 2007;Hamilton and Buchanan 2009;Lycett 2008;Lycett and von CramonTaubadel 2015;Lyman et al 2009;Mesoudi 2011;Neiman 1995;Rogers et al 2009;Shennan 2000Shennan , 2011. Indeed, the experiment demonstrates the capacity for relatively minor behavioral differences to mediate the potential "heritability" of artifacts in cultural systems, which is a specific quantitative property possessed by artifact populations that can be conceived of as a ratio of the within-assemblage artifactual variation to the within-population behavioral variation of their makers that is directly influencing artifactual variability (Lycett 2016;Lycett et al 2016).…”

“…In the context of cultural transmission systems ("traditions"), such evolutionary forces could take the form of either selective biases (e.g., choosing to produce one pot form over another) or random factors that result in cultural "drift" in the form and variation of artifactual products (Eerkens andLipo 2005, 2007;Hamilton and Buchanan 2009;Lycett 2008;Lyman et al 2009;Mesoudi and O'Brien 2008;Mesoudi 2011;Neiman 1995;O'Brien and Lyman 2000;Rogers et al 2009;Shennan 2000Shennan , 2011. Again, however, at the crux of such a framework is the idea that subtle variations in artifacts caused by subtle variations in behavior might subsequently become exaggerated by these evolutionary forces (Lycett and von Cramon-Taubadel 2015;VanPool 2001).…”

Homology across inheritance systems

“…For a wide range of cultural traits, phylogeny turns out to be a stronger predictor of similarity than geography, painting an increasingly lineage-based rather than diffusion-based picture of cultural evolution. Cultural lineages have been identified (and genetically corroborated) for traits such as subsistence innovations, house-constructing techniques, family and marriage structures, sexual division of labour, metal-working technologies (for a review, see Mace and Jordon 2011), canoe-design (Rogers, Feldman and Ehrlich 2009), projectile points (Buchanan and Collard, 2007), textile designs (Tehrani and Collard 2002), languages (Gray et al 2009), semantic distinctions (Jordan 2011) and lexical replacements (Pagel 2009). Moreover, as these methods have been successfully applied to post-Neolithic human populations with sophisticated methods of subsistence, communication, trade and transportation, it is likely that they would be equally if not more applicable to the smaller hunter-gatherer groups of earlier hominin evolution, which were more insulated from other cultures and hence likely to exhibit less intercultural blending.…”