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Cultural evolution, social ratcheting and the evolution of human division of labour
Vinicius, Lucio Rizzo, Leonardo Battiston, Federico Migliano, Andrea Bamberg
Vinicius, Lucio
Rizzo, Leonardo
Battiston, Federico
Migliano, Andrea Bamberg
Title / Series / Name
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publication Volume
380
Publication Issue
1922
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Biological Evolution
Cognition
Cultural Evolution
Humans
Social Evolution
Cognition
Cultural Evolution
Humans
Social Evolution
Files
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Rizzo-Leonardo_2025.pdf
Adobe PDF, 9.23 MB
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27054
Abstract
While ecological specialization, social differentiation and division of labour are found in many species, extensive and irreversible interdependence among culturally specialized producers is a characteristic feature of humans. By extending the concept of cultural ratcheting (or the evolution of cultural products of such complexity that they become very unlikely to be recreated from scratch by naive individuals), we present simulation models showing how cumulative cultural evolution may have engendered a parallel process of 'social ratcheting' or the origin of culturally differentiated and irreversible interdependent individuals and groups. We provide evidence that the evolution of cultural division of labour in humans may have been associated with social network structures splitting the cognitive costs of cultural production across differentiated specialists, significantly reducing the burden of cultural learning on individual cognition and memory. While previous models often assumed agents with unlimited memories, we show that limiting individual memories to a fraction of available cultural repertoires has a noticeable accelerating effect on both cultural evolution and social differentiation among producers. We conclude that cultural and social ratcheting may have been two linked outcomes of cultural evolution in the hominin lineage. This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2025-03-20
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1098/rstb.2023.0277