Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-x2lbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T13:42:37.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The key to cultural innovation lies in the group dynamic rather than in the individual mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2012

Sonia Ragir  and
Patricia J. Brooks
Sonia Ragir
Affiliation:
College of Staten Island, City University of New York, Staten Island, NY 10314. soniaragir@gmail.com patricia.brooks@csi.cuny.edu http://www.csi.cuny.edu/faculty/BROOKS_PATRICIA.html
Patricia J. Brooks
Affiliation:
College of Staten Island, City University of New York, Staten Island, NY 10314. soniaragir@gmail.com patricia.brooks@csi.cuny.edu http://www.csi.cuny.edu/faculty/BROOKS_PATRICIA.html
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation – a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , August 2012 , pp. 237 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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

Aiello, L. C. & Key, C. (2002) Energetic consequences of being a Homo erectus female. American Journal of Human Biology 14:551–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aiello, L. C. & Wells, J. C. (2002) Energetics and the evolution of the genus Homo . Annual Review of Anthropology 31:323–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bavelier, D., Green, S. & Dye, M. W. (2010) Children, wired: For better and for worse. Neuron 9:692–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boserup, E. (1981) Population and technological change: A study of long-term trends. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cachel, S. & Harris, J. W. (1995) Ranging patterns, land-use and subsistence in Homo erectus from the perspective of evolutionary ecology. In: Human evolution in its ecological context. Palaeo-anthropology: Evolution and ecology of Homo erectus, ed. Bower, J. R. & Sartono, S., pp. 52–65. Leiden University.Google Scholar
Donald, M. W. (1991) Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fay, N., Garrod, S. & Carletta, J. (2000) Group discussion as interactive dialogue or as serial monologue: The influence of group size. Psychological Science 11(6):481–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fay, N., Garrod, S. & Roberts, L. (2008) The fitness and functionality of culturally evolved communication systems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363:351–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fay, N., Garrod, S., Roberts, L. & Swoboda, N. (2010) The interactive evolution of human communication systems. Cognitive Science 34(3):351–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garrod, S. & Doherty, G. (1994) Conversation, coordination and convention – An empirical investigation of how groups establish linguistic conventions. Cognition 53(3):181–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garrod, S., Fay, N., Rogers, S., Walker, B. & Swoboda, N. (2010) Can iterated learning explain the ermergence of graphical symbols? Interaction Studies 11(1):33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003) The resilience of langauge: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Greenfield, P. M. (1984) Mind and media: The effects of television, videogames, and computers. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hrdy, S. B. (2009) Mothers and others: The evoltuionary origins of mutual understanding. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jochim, M. A. (1976) Hunter-Gatherer subsistence and settlement: A predictive model. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Jochim, M. A. (1981) Strategies for survival: Cultural behavior in an ecological context. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, H., Hill, K., Lancaster, J. & Hurtado, A. M. (2000) A theory of human life history evolution: Diet, intelligence, and longevity. Evolutionary Anthropology 4:156–85.3.0.CO;2-7>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kegl, J., Senghas, A. & Coppola, M. (1999) Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua. In: Language creation and language change: Creolization, diachrony, and development, pp. 179–238. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (1984) Knowledge of sign language in an Australian Aboriginal community. Journal of Anthropological Research 40:556–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laden, G. & Wrangham, R. W. (2005) The rise of the hominids as an adaptive shift in fallback foods: Plant underground storage organs (USOs) and the origin of australopiths. Journal of Human Evolution 49:482–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Connell, J., Hawkes, K. & Blurton Jones, N. (2002) Meat-eating, grandmothering, and the evolution of early human diets. In: Human diet: Its origin and evolution, ed. Ungar, P. S. & Teaford, M. F., pp. 49–60. Bergin & Garvey.Google Scholar
Ragir, S. (1985) Retarded development: The evolutionary mechanism underlying the emergence of the human capacity for language. The Journal of Mind and Behavior 6(4):451–68.Google Scholar
Ragir, S. (2000) Diet and food preparation: Rethinking early hominid behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology 9(4):153–56.3.0.CO;2-D>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ragir, S. (2002) Constraints on communities with indigenous sign languages: Clues to the dynamics of language genesis. In: Transitions to language, ed Wray, A., pp. 272–94. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ragir, S., Rosenberg, M. & Tierno, P. (2000) Gut morphology and the avoidance of carrion among chimpanzees, baboons and early hominids. Journal of Anthropological Research 56(4):477–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Senghas, R. J., Senghas, A. & Pyers, J. E. (2005) The emergence of Nicaraguan sign language: Questions of development, acquisition, and evolution. In Biology and knowledge revisited: From neurogenesis to psychogenesis, ed. Langer, J., Parker, S. T. & Milbrath, C., pp. 287–306. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Steels, L. (2006) Experiments on the emergence of human communication. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(8):347–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steels, L., Kaplan, F., Mcintyre, A. & Van Looveren, J. (2002) Crucial factors in the origins of word-meaning. In: The transitions to language, ed. Wray, A., pp. 252–71. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tobach, E., Falmagne, R. J., Parlee, M. B., Martin, L. M. W. & Scribner Kapelman, A. (1997) Mind and social practice: Selected writings of Sylvia Scribner. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar