Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for cultural production, from the arts and
language to science and technology. How did the human mind—and the uniquely human …

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the
wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters …

Social learning (learning through observation or interaction with other individuals) is
widespread in nature and is central to the remarkable success of humanity, yet it remains …

The use of socially learned information (culture) is central to human adaptations. We
investigate the hypothesis that the process of cultural evolution has played an active …

Evolutionary game theory originated in population biology from the realisation that
frequency-dependent fitness introduced a strategic element into evolution. Since its …

The study of cultural evolution using ideas from population biology began about 50 y ago,
with the work of LL Cavalli-Sforza, Marcus Feldman, and ourselves. It has grown from this …

The evolutionary status of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is central to
assessments of whether modern society has created it, either physically or socially; and is …

Long before the origins of agriculture human ancestors had expanded across the globe into
an immense variety of environments, from Australian deserts to Siberian tundra. Survival in …

It is commonly assumed that parents are important sources of socially learned behavior and
beliefs. However, the empirical evidence that parents are cultural models is ambiguous, and …

Why do societies collapse? We use an individual-based evolutionary model to show that, in
environmental conditions dominated by low-frequency variation (“red noise”), extirpation …