Hunter-Gatherers and Neo-Darwinian Cultural Transmission

Abstract

Cultural transmission theory—sometimes called dual inheritance theory—is the focus of this chapter. The neo-Darwinian models presented here treat cultural transmission and reproduction as extrasomatic rather than simple biological analogs. This leads to predictions about behavior that differ fundamentally from those that follow from the genetic model upon which classic evolutionary ecological analyses rest, but that in many ways better account for behaviors that distinguish humans from other organisms (e.g., altruism, cooperation).