Culture and Cumulative Culture
Key References
Defining
LALAND AND HOPPITT (2003): group-typical behaviour patterns shared by members of a community that
rely on socially learned and transmitted information
This definition, variations upon which are now widely used in studies on the subject, comes out of a
lengthy discussion of other definitions and their limitations – particularly of those that imply a
degree of “human exceptionalism”, which ‘encourage the misguided view that humans are
(uniquely) unique, which is only trivially true since all species are unique’
Modes of cultural transmission
CAVALLI-SFORZA & FELDMAN (1981): population geneticists. Base these three modes of transmission on
quantifiable mathematical models:
1) Vertical transmission: from parent to offspring, much like with gene transmission in biological
evolution. Contributes to more inter-group cultural variation
2) Horizontal transmission: among peers in a given population/generation. Expected to result in fast
rates of transmission and to result in less inter-group cultural variation
3) Oblique transmission: from one generation to a younger generation, like with teaching. This is
characterised by a sharp decline in behavioural variation in the given population. Can occur
between grandparent and grandchild as well as parent to child, or between unrelated individuals,
etc.
Identifying
Examples of how to detect culture should be learnt in the following format: details of the technique,
pros/cons, examples of the technique being used.
1) The “ethnographic” method
Con: neglects the interplay between genetics, ecology and culture (LALAND AND JANIK 2006).
Correlations between behavioural and ecological variables are to be expected because culture is a
source of adaptive behaviour, and one should also anticipate cultural and genetic covariance,
because animal learning is influenced by genetic predispositions/abilities
Genes, ecology and learning all influence vertebrate behaviour and, as a result, the ethnographic
method would reject most genuine cases of culture if rigorously applied
Example: WHITEN et al. (1999) – chimpanzee cultures.
2) Experimental approaches
Translocation details: determine whether behavioural changes are explained by ecology/genetics or
culture e.g. if newly introduced animals adopt the behaviour of established residents, one can reject
explanations in terms of genetic differences between populations (LALAND AND JANIK 2006).
Example: bluehead wrasse mating sites (WARNER 1988)
Mating sites of the bluehead wrasse (coral reef fish) have remained in daily use over 12 years (four
generations) without changing locations. Here, I show that experimental replacement of entire local
populations led to the use of new sites, which continued to be used after the manipulations
, -> mating site locations may not be the result of individual assessment of current resource quality,
but instead represent culturally transmitted traditions
3) Social network-based diffusion analyses
Network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) uses an association matrix to estimate the proportion of time
that individuals are associated to quantify the extent to which social network structure explains the spread
of a behaviour (ALLEN et al. 2013).
Example: the spread of lobtail feeding in humpback whales (HOBAITER et al. 2014).
Is culture uniquely human?
LALAND AND JANIK (2006): the debate over whether animal social learning represents a manifestation of
homologous traits shared with humans or merely a superficial resemblance to human culture is ongoing.
Social learning
READER AND BIRO (2010): social learning has been unequivocally demonstrated in 20 different species in
the wild across a range of contexts, including forgaing, predator avoidance, and habitat choice
Clearly, the underpinning for culture is widely present across the animal kingdom (to different
extents)
Differences with human culture
Number of traditions, imitation, conformity punishment.
WHITEN et al. (2003): humans exhibit a multitude of traditions, with most studies of animal traditions only
identifying a single variation
Human communities differ culturally in a plethora of ways, and whilst chimpanzee communities, for
example, exhibit an overall profile of behaviour patterns that differs from the profile of every other
community in a whole suite of behaviour patterns, this difference is still vastly more complex in the
human case
WHITEN et al. (2003): two-action experiments have demonstrated imitation in animals such as
chimpanzees, but chimpanzee social learning often focuses on what tools are doing and what the critical
outcomes of a task are, rather than bodily details, a preference that has been distinguished by some as an
“emulation” rather than true imitation (this contrasts with humans, for whom an adaptive default strategy
is to over-copy apparently purposeful actions of adults).
APLIN et al. (2014): whilst it has been argued that conformity and convention (individuals
disproportionately adopting the most frequent local variant when first acquiring an innovation, and
continuing to favour social information over personal information) are characteristically human cultural
phenomena, the experimental introduction of alternative novel foraging techniques into replicated wild
sub-populations of great tits (Parus major) revealed a strong effect of social conformity, with individuals
disproportionately adopting the most common local variant and continuing to favour social information
over personal information (thought to be a key factor in the evolution of complex culture in humans).
Primates
WHITEN et al. (1999): chimpanzee cultures
39 putative: “cultural variants” across the 7 longest-running chimpanzee field sites
