Population Size and Cumulative Cultural Evolution: Fewer Heads Can Be Better than Many

Fay, Nicolas; Kleine, Naomi De; Walker, Bradley; Caldwell, Christine A.

doi:10.31219/osf.io/jpqzt

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Additionally, contact between groups may allow for combination of cultural features (as explored in [8]), which may also increase the cultural repertoire. Since the 1960s [19], a number of findings have supported this hypothesis [5,10,[20][21][22][23], some have provided conflicting evidence [9,13,[24][25][26], and others suggest it might have more predictive power in certain contexts (i.e., in food-producing societies more than in hunter-gatherer groups) [27]. In this article, we use an agent-based model of cultural evolution to illustrate a simple scenario that could cause cultural repertoire sizes to deviate from the predictions of the population-size Draft hypothesis even when the underlying assumptions hold: when there is inter-group contact, even when it occurs rarely, the cultural repertoire of a focal population could be influenced by those of the populations connected to it.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling effects of inter-group contact on links between population size and cultural complexity

Ben-Oren

Strassberg

Hovers

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Human populations rely on cultural artifacts and complex cumulative culture for their survival. Populations vary dramatically in the size of their tool repertoires, and the determinants of these cultural repertoire sizes have been the focus of extensive study in recent years. A prominent hypothesis, supported by computational models of cultural evolution, asserts that tool repertoire size increases with population size. However, not all empirical studies seeking to test this hypothesis have found such a correlation; this has led to a contentious and ongoing debate. As a possible resolution to this longstanding controversy, we suggest that accounting for even rare cultural migration events that allow sharing of knowledge between different-sized populations may help explain why a population's size might not always predict its cultural repertoire size. Using an agent-based model to explore different assumptions about the effects of population size and migration on tool repertoires, we find that connectivity of one population to others, particularly to large populations, may significantly boost its tool repertoire size when population interactions lead to cultural exchange. Thus, two populations of identical size may have drastically different tool repertoire sizes, hinging upon their access to other groups' knowledge. Intermittent contact between populations boosts cultural repertoire size and still allows for the development of unique tool repertoires that have limited overlap between populations.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling effects of inter-group contact on links between population size and cultural complexity

Ben-Oren

Strassberg

Hovers

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Population Size and Cumulative Cultural Evolution: Fewer Heads Can Be Better than Many

Abstract: 24The extent to which larger populations benefit cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is 25 contentious. We report a large-scale experiment (N=543) that investigates the CCE of 26

Cited by 1 publication

References 11 publications

Modeling effects of inter-group contact on links between population size and cultural complexity

Modeling effects of inter-group contact on links between population size and cultural complexity

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