the pace of cultural evolution文化进化的步伐.pdfVIP

The Pace of Cultural Evolution Charles Perreault* Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America Abstract Today, humans inhabit most of the world’s terrestrial habitats. This observation has been explained by the fact that we possess a secondary inheritance mechanism, culture, in addition to a genetic system. Because it is assumed that cultural evolution occurs faster than biological evolution, humans can adapt to new ecosystems more rapidly than other animals. This assumption, however, has never been tested empirically. Here, I compare rates of change in human technologies to rates of change in animal morphologies. I find that rates of cultural evolution are inversely correlated with the time interval over which they are measured, which is similar to what is known for biological rates. This correlation explains why the pace of cultural evolution appears faster when measured over recent time periods, where time intervals are often shorter. Controlling for the correlation between rates and time intervals, I show that (1) cultural evolution is faster than biological evolution; (2) this effect holds true even when the generation time of species is controlled for; and (3) culture allows us to evolve over short time scales, which are normally accessible only to short-lived species, while at the same time allowing for us to enjoy the benefits of having a long life history. Citation: Perreault C (2012) The Pace of Cultural Evolution. PLoS ONE 7(9): e45150. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045150 Editor: Alex Mesoudi, Durham University, United Kingdom Received March 29, 2012; Accepted August 17, 2012; Published September 14, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Charles Perreault. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, prov