Cultural Evolution Across Domains: Language, Technology and Art.

Abstract

The social and cognitive mechanisms of cultural evolutionhave been studied in detail for different domains: language,technology, the economy, art, etc. However, a model thatincorporates the function of a cultural tradition and that isable to compare evolutionary dynamics across culturaldomains has not been formulated. By exploring the dynamicsof comparable linguistic, technological and artisticexperimental tasks, we test the effect of domain-specificfunction on evolutionary mechanisms such as inheritance,innovation and selection. We find evidence that culturaldomain shapes both the structure of the traditions and the waythe cultural-evolutionary mechanisms operate. Thesimplifying effects of cultural transmission are noticeable inlanguage and technology, but not in art; innovation is highestin art and lowest in language; and functional pressures lead todifferent morphological adaptations across domains. Thisspeaks of a crucial role of function and domain in theevolution of culture.

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