EEB 2202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Stirrup, Dual Inheritance Theory, Bridle
Document Summary
Forces of cultural evolution: random forces- Cultural mutation: random individual- level processes, e. g. misremembering, happens in any size population. Cultural drift: statistical anomalies in small populations, e. g. a skill practiced by a few specialists, who die by change will be lost, not important in large population: decision-making forces- Guided variation: smart people change cultural variants in non-random direction e. g. invention, not random force. Direct: some variants are easier to remember than others. Model-based: traits associated with high prestige individuals are favored. Both at the individual and group level possible. Human culture: highly complex and sophisticated, collective- not individual, gradualistic: many small steps, cumulative- Alexander graham bell invented the telephone but it was a synthesis of the work of many people (leon scott, etc. : adaptive- Technologies that confer a great advantage on a group are rapidly adopted and disseminated. Cultural evolution of horse-riding: domestication of the horse: c. 3500 bce kazakhstan.