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The origins of human cumulative culture: from the foraging niche to collective intelligence
Various studies have investigated cognitive mechanisms underlying culture in humans and other great apes. However, the adaptive reasons for the evolution of uniquely sophisticated cumulative culture in our species remain unclear. Professor Migliano proposes that the cultural capabilities of humans are the evolutionary result of a stepwise transition from the ape-like lifestyle of earlier hominins to the foraging niche still observed in extant hunter–gatherers. Recent ethnographic, archaeological and genetic studies have provided compelling evidence that the components of the foraging niche (social egalitarianism, sexual and social division of labour, extensive co-residence and cooperation with unrelated individuals, multilocality, fluid sociality and high between-camp mobility) engendered a unique multilevel social structure where the cognitive mechanisms underlying cultural evolution (high-fidelity transmission, innovation, teaching, recombination, ratcheting) evolved as adaptations. Therefore, multilevel sociality underlies a ‘social ratchet’ or irreversible task specialization splitting the burden of cultural knowledge across individuals, which may explain why human collective intelligence is uniquely able to produce sophisticated cumulative culture. The foraging niche perspective may explain why a complex gene-culture dual inheritance system evolved uniquely in humans and interprets the cultural, morphological and genetic origins of Homo sapiens as a process of recombination of innovations appearing in differentiated but interconnected populations.
30:00 minutes
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Characterisation of Hunter-Gatherers Network and Implications for Cumulative Culture
Social networks in modern societies are highly structured, usually involving frequent contact with a small number of unrelated “friends”. However, contact network structures in traditional small-scale societies, especially hunter-gatherers, are poorly characterized. We developed a portable wireless sensing technology (motes) to study within-camp proximity networks among Agta and BaYaka hunter-gatherers in fine detail. We show that hunter-gatherer social networks exhibit signs of increased efficiency 2 for potential information exchange. Increased network efficiency is achieved through investment in a few strong links among non-kin ‘friends’ connecting unrelated families. We show that interactions with non-kin appear in childhood, creating opportunities for collaboration and cultural exchange beyond family at early ages. We also show that strong friendships are more important than family ties in predicting levels of shared knowledge among individuals. We hypothesize that efficient transmission of cumulative culture may have shaped human social networks and contributed to our tendency to extend networks beyond kin and form strong non-kin ties.
04:30 minutes
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Friendship and Hunter-Gatherers Social Networks
Hunter-gatherers offer the closest existing examples of human lifestyles and social organisation in the past, offering vital insights into human evolutionary history. To map the social networks of populations of Agta and BaYaka hunter-gatherers in Congo and the Philippines, researchers from the Hunter-Gatherer Resilience Project in UCL Anthropology used devices called mote - a wireless sensing technology worn as an armband that can record the interactions a person has in one day.
04:20 minutes
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Agta Mother colaborates with her eldest daughter to catch octopus while the youngest daughter observes and learn. Adapting tools and coral breaking techniques are part of this technology transference.
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Cooperative Foraging in the Agta Hunter-Gatherers
02:00 minutes
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Friends and family? Evolutionary theory stresses the importance of living with kin, not least because they share some of our genes. Nevertheless, a large-scale assessment of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies has established a consistent pattern of unrelated individuals living together. Dyble et al. used a modeling approach to suggest that a possible answer to this conundrum is that cohabitation choices are being governed equally by men and women.
Sex Equality Can Explain the Unique Social Structure of Hunter-Gatherer Bands
01:40 minutes
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Hunter-Gatherers Resilience Project (Video report)
This video is about a workshop in Cornwall (2014) with PhD students returning from a year of fieldwork with different hunter-gatherers groups. We used this time to analyse cross-culture data and develop collaborative papers. In the video the PhD students talk about their experiences, and field results.
12:30 minutes
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Cooperation and the Evolution of Hunter-Gatherers Storytelling
Storytelling is a human universal. From gathering around the camp-fire telling tales of ancestors to watching the latest television box-set, humans are inveterate producers and consumers of stories. Despite its ubiquity, little attention has been given to understanding the function and evolution of storytelling. Here we explore the impact of storytelling on hunter-gatherer cooperative behaviour and the individual-level fitness benefits to being a skilled storyteller. Stories told by the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population, convey messages relevant to coordinating behaviour in a foraging ecology, such as cooperation, sex equality and egalitarianism. These themes are present in narratives from other foraging societies. We also show that the presence of good storytellers is associated with increased cooperation.
03:55 minutes
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Radio Sensor Technology (No Audio)
This video shows a radio sensor technology developed by our group to trace Hunter-Gatherers social interactions and analyse social networks
00:47 Seconds
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Duncker Candle Problem (No Audio)
This video is about a cooperative experiment with the Agta Hunter-Gatherers where groups work together to solve the Duncker Candle Problem.
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