Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-45ctf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-27T07:46:40.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Clarifying the time frame and units of selection in the cultural group selection hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Andrew Whiten  and
David Erdal
Andrew Whiten
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9JP, United Kingdom. aw2@st-andrews.ac.uk www.st-andrews.ac.uk/profile/aw2
David Erdal
Affiliation:
School of Management, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, KY16 9RJ, United Kingdom. david@erdal.org.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We raise and discuss two issues for clarification. First, over what timescale is cultural group selection proposed to have been active? Unprecedented cooperation is inferred to have arisen in hunter-gather life well before the recent period on which Richerson et al. focus. Second, what is the unit of selection? Groups (of human individuals)? Or cultural entities along the lines of “meme-complexes”?

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e57
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aunger, R., ed. (2000) Darwinizing culture: The status of memetics as a science. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1976) The selfish gene. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Erdal, D. & Whiten, A. (1996) Egalitarianism and Machiavellian intelligence in human evolution. In: Modelling the early human mind, ed. Mellars, P. & Gibson, K., pp. 139–50. McDonald Institute Monographs.Google Scholar
Hewlett, B., Fouts, H. N., Boyette, A. H. & Hewlett, B. L. (2011) Social learning among Congo Basin hunter-gatherers. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366:1168–78.Google Scholar
Jordan, P. (2015) Technology as human social tradition: Cultural transmission among hunter-gatherers. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Whiten, A. & Erdal, D. (2012) The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B 367:2119–29.Google Scholar