IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/thpobi/v74y2008i1p46-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why does human culture increase exponentially?

Author

Listed:
  • Enquist, M.
  • Ghirlanda, S.
  • Jarrick, A.
  • Wachtmeister, C.-A.

Abstract

Historical records show that culture can increase exponentially in time, e.g., in number of poems, musical works, scientific discoveries. We model how human capacities for creativity and cultural transmission may make such an increase possible, suggesting that: (1) creativity played a major role at the origin of human culture and for its accumulation throughout history, because cultural transmission cannot, on its own, generate exponentially increasing amounts of culture; (2) exponential increase in amount of culture can only occur if creativity is positively influenced by culture. The evolution of cultural transmission is often considered the main genetic bottleneck for the origin of culture, because natural selection cannot favor cultural transmission without any culture to transmit. Our models suggest that an increase in individual creativity may have been the first step toward human culture, because in a population of creative individuals there may be enough non-genetic information to favor the evolution of cultural transmission.

Suggested Citation

  • Enquist, M. & Ghirlanda, S. & Jarrick, A. & Wachtmeister, C.-A., 2008. "Why does human culture increase exponentially?," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 46-55.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:74:y:2008:i:1:p:46-55
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2008.04.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004058090800052X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tpb.2008.04.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. A. Whiten & J. Goodall & W. C. McGrew & T. Nishida & V. Reynolds & Y. Sugiyama & C. E. G. Tutin & R. W. Wrangham & C. Boesch, 1999. "Cultures in chimpanzees," Nature, Nature, vol. 399(6737), pages 682-685, June.
    2. Stefano Ghirlanda & Magnus Enquist, 2007. "Cumulative culture and explosive demographic transitions," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 41(4), pages 591-600, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Strimling, Pontus & Sjöstrand, Jonas & Enquist, Magnus & Eriksson, Kimmo, 2009. "Accumulation of independent cultural traits," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 77-83.
    2. Juliet Dunstone & Christine A. Caldwell, 2018. "Cumulative culture and explicit metacognition: a review of theories, evidence and key predictions," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Andrew Buskell & Magnus Enquist & Fredrik Jansson, 2019. "A systems approach to cultural evolution," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, December.
    4. Ghirlanda, Stefano & Enquist, Magnus & Perc, Matjaž, 2010. "Sustainability of culture-driven population dynamics," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 181-188.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kolk, Martin, 2019. "Demographic Theory and Population Ethics – Relationships between Population Size and Population Growth," SocArXiv 62wxd, Center for Open Science.
    2. Sueur, Cédric & Fourneret, Eric & Espinosa, Romain, 2023. "Animal capital: a new way to define human-animal bond in view of global changes," OSF Preprints svg7x, Center for Open Science.
    3. James Winters, 2019. "Escaping optimization traps: the role of cultural adaptation and cultural exaptation in facilitating open-ended cumulative dynamics," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Wibowo, Ferry Wahyu & Sediyono, Eko & Purnomo, Hindriyanto Dwi, 2022. "Chimpanzee leader election optimization," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 68-95.
    5. Kandler, Anne & Laland, Kevin N., 2009. "An investigation of the relationship between innovation and cultural diversity," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 59-67.
    6. Wakano, Joe Yuichiro & Gilpin, William & Kadowaki, Seiji & Feldman, Marcus W. & Aoki, Kenichi, 2018. "Ecocultural range-expansion scenarios for the replacement or assimilation of Neanderthals by modern humans," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 3-14.
    7. Rachel L Kendal & Jeremy R Kendal & Will Hoppitt & Kevin N Laland, 2009. "Identifying Social Learning in Animal Populations: A New ‘Option-Bias’ Method," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(8), pages 1-9, August.
    8. Hopkins, William D. & Li, Xiang & Roberts, Neil, 2019. "More intelligent chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have larger brains and increased cortical thickness," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 18-24.
    9. Dominique Guillo & Nicolas Claidière, 2020. "Do guide dogs have culture? The case of indirect social learning," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.
    10. Gifford, Adam, 2013. "Sociality, trust, kinship and cultural evolution," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 218-227.
    11. Elisa Bandini & Rachel A. Harrison & Alba Motes-Rodrigo, 2022. "Examining the suitability of extant primates as models of hominin stone tool culture," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-18, December.
    12. John Gerring & Paul A. Barresi, 2003. "Putting Ordinary Language to Work," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(2), pages 201-232, April.
    13. Kobayashi, Yutaka & Ohtsuki, Hisashi & Wakano, Joe Y., 2016. "Population size vs. social connectedness — A gene-culture coevolutionary approach to cumulative cultural evolution," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 87-95.
    14. Ghirlanda, Stefano & Enquist, Magnus & Perc, Matjaž, 2010. "Sustainability of culture-driven population dynamics," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 181-188.
    15. Ohtsuki, Hisashi & Wakano, Joe Yuichiro & Kobayashi, Yutaka, 2017. "Inclusive fitness analysis of cumulative cultural evolution in an island-structured population," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 13-23.
    16. Felix Riede & R. Bentley, 2008. "Increasing the relevance of mathematical approaches to demographic history," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 275-281, April.
    17. Suren Basov, 2002. "Imitation And Social Learning," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 843, The University of Melbourne.
    18. Aoki, Kenichi, 2015. "Modeling abrupt cultural regime shifts during the Palaeolithic and Stone Age," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 6-12.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:74:y:2008:i:1:p:46-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/intelligence .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.