Pathways to cultural adaptation: the coevolution of cumulative culture and social networks.

ABSTRACT: Humans have adapted to an immense array of environments by accumulating culturally transmitted knowledge and skills. Adaptive culture can accumulate either via more distinct cultural traits or via improvements of existing cultural traits. The kind of culture that accumulates depends on, and coevolves with, the social structure of societies. Here, we show that the coevolution of learning networks and cumulative culture results in two distinct pathways to cultural adaptation: highly connected populations with high proficiency but low trait diversity vs. sparsely connected populations with low proficiency but higher trait diversity. Importantly, we show there is a conflict between group-level payoffs, which are maximised in highly connected groups that attain high proficiency, and individual

SUBMITTER: Smolla M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10565192 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature