Cumulative cultural evolution is what 'makes us odd'; our capacity to learn facts and
techniques from others, and to refine them over generations, plays a major role in making …

Cultural evolution and cognitive science need each other. Cultural evolution needs cognitive
science to find out whether the conditions necessary for Darwinian evolution are met in the …

What makes fast, cumulative cultural evolution work? Where did it come from? Why is it the
sole preserve of humans? We set out a self-assembly hypothesis: cultural evolution evolved …

Highlights•Humans have colonised and transformed every terrestrial environment on the
planet.•This ecological success can be attributed to our capacity for cultural evolution.•High …

When humans and other animals make cultural innovations, they also change their
environment, thereby imposing new selective pressures that can modify their biological …

If social learning is more efficient than independent individual exploration, animals should
learn vital cultural skills exclusively, and routine skills faster, through social learning …

A mere few decades ago, culture was thought a unique human attribute. Evidence to the
contrary accumulated through the latter part of the twentieth century and has exploded in the …

YOU AND I are very unusual beasts. Our ancestors, mere African primates, spread across
the globe long before the origins of agriculture, the first cities, or industrial technologies …

Highlights•Cumulative cultural evolution is unique to the human species.•One basis for
cumulative culture is human children's tendency to conform.•Another basis for cumulative …

Culture is a human universal, yet it is a source of variation in human psychology, behaviour
and development. Developmental researchers are now expanding the geographical scope …