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We conduct trust games in three villages in a northeastern Romanian commune. From 1775–1919, these villages were arbitrarily assigned to opposite sides of the Austrian and Ottoman/Russian border despite being located seven kilometers apart. This plausibly exogenous border assignment affected local institutions and late-18th century migration in a manner that likely also affected trust. Conditional on trust norms being affected by these centuries-old historical circumstances, our experimental design tests the degree to which such norms are transmitted intergenerationally. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find that participants on the Austrian side that also have family roots in the village are indeed more likely to trust outsiders.

The patriarchal tradition of surnaming a child after its father in Han Chinese families may contribute to their preference for sons, a major cause of the abnormally high SRB (sex ratio at birth) in China. This high SRB can subsequently contribute to the marriage squeeze on males of marriageable age. Encouraging matrilineal surnaming has been proposed as a strategy that could potentially reduce son preference and help to adjust the imbalance in SRB. Here, we model factors that are likely to influence surnaming decisions, including cultural transmission of parents’ surnaming decisions, the cultural value of a daughter, reward given to matrilineal surnaming, and awareness of current imbalance in SRB. Mathematical and computational analyses suggest that offering a significant reward and raising public awareness of the problems inherent in an excess of marriage-age males may overcome the son preference and reduce the male-biased SRB.

Gambling in ancient North America was primarily an intergroup activity. This position as a liminal practice, taking place on territorial frontiers and at large intertribal gatherings, puts gaming on the very forefront of cultural transmission and knowledge exchange, with several implications. Intergroup gaming results in a shared fluency of games, transcending barriers of language and ethnicity. Evidence of common methods and materials allows ancient, region-spanning social networks to be identified. And subtle variations demonstrate a repeated and ongoing negotiation between groups over time as objectives and participants change, with this evolution of gaming practices continuing to the present day. The freedom to adapt to changing conditions, contrasted with notions of a static “traditional” past, is not just a matter of sovereignty relating to Indigenous games. It is a reflection of the nature of Indigenous gaming as it has always been.

Purpose This study aims to identify the role of this intangible cultural heritage (ICH) domain (i.e. social practices, rituals and festive events) in social representations in cross nations using the case of Mazu belief. This study also intends to compare the different social representations of the same religious belief among the regions and implies how ICH facilitates regional connections and its potential for urban tourism development. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a mix of qualitative approaches, such as desktop research, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and participant observations. These approaches can supplement one another in discovering the cultural context of the Mazu belief and the perceived meanings of its ritual practices. Findings Mazu ritual practices in the four identified cities have different social representations, as explicitly expressed from the informants on different forms of celebration. Despite the differences, Mazu belief is representative in placemaking and for regional connections. Not all four cities agree on the current status as embedded in tourism development. However, the key informants show a welcoming manner to the outsiders in participating and experiencing their practices. Research limitations/implications The research context of Mazu belief and customs can be extended to more urban cities, which practice this culture. Practical implications Different countries and regions that share the same belief can understand distinct social representations from one another. Practical collaborations can be expanded for cultural exchanges, especially the exploration of the role of religion played in boosting urban tourism development. Social implications Mazu belief and customs is a unique cultural asset in enhancing the social representations of Chinese expatriates overseas. Its cultural practices successfully enhance the cultural exchange and social cohesion among religious communities locally and internationally. Originality/value Using a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-inscribed ICH item with a large audience worldwide, this study supplements the theory of social representations in exploring the intangible cultural assets and highlights the role of ICH in urban tourism and regional and city planning.

This article shows empirical and conceptual possibilities of exploring the transcultural roles and economic situations of French migrant women who served as governesses in the noble circles of the Habsburg monarchy. It combines various research methods, employing narrative textual analysis, socioeconomic and material culture approaches, and cultural exchange perspectives. The author uses printed librettos and comparative insights to reveal broader social anxieties connected with governesses who crossed multiple borders in terms of geography, culture, language, class, and the gender order. She also draws attention to inheritance tax–related sources as evidence of these women's economic conditions. Finally, the author outlines the major shifts in attitudes toward the French language and French immigrants and shows how these affected the governesses’ labor market.

This paper empirically investigates the impact of willingness to take risks on the likelihood of being an entrepreneur. We use a quarter-century of data on second-generation Americans from Current Population Surveys in conjunction with country-level measures of willingness to take risks from the Global Preference Survey. The average level of risk taking in the country of origin is found to have a positive and significant impact on the likelihood of being an entrepreneur. A one-standard deviation increase in risk taking increases the probability of being an entrepreneur by 15 percent. We also examine other preferences and cultural measures including trust, patience, and individualism. We find that these do not have an impact on entrepreneurship, while risk taking continues to be significant.

Emerging understanding of the extent to which the childhood environment can influence long-term neural and cognitive development may justify greater attention to its role in prehistory. In this review, we attempt to identify a range of ways in which changes to the rearing environment might impact on cognitive function with the potential to modify processes of cultural transmission. We focus on the types of change to the infant environment that may arise when moving from mobile hunter-gather to more settled agrarian lifeways. We consider the evidence for such early environmental factors bringing about enduring effects on perceptual tuning, shared attention, behavioural regulation and observational learning, and how these might contribute to differences in processes of cultural transmission across lifeways. We conclude that the potential developmental significance of cultural changes to the infant environment suggests more attention should be paid by archaeologists to lines of evidence related to early childhood environments in prehistory.

The paper explains long-term changes in birth, death rates, and in attitude to personal consumption by evolution of preferences by means of cultural transmission. When communities are culturally isolated, they are focused on population growth, which results in large fertility and welfare transfers to children, limited adult consumption, and lack of old-age support. With increasing cultural contact across communities, successful cultural traits induce their hosts to increase their social visibility by limiting fertility and increasing longevity via higher individual consumption. Empirical analysis confirms that social visibility, as measured by the number of language versions of Wikipedia biographical pages, is associated with fewer children and longer lifespan. The presence of notable individuals precedes reduced aggregate birth rates.

O objetivo deste artigo é o de apresentar algumas posições filosóficas, que dialogam com diferentes áreas do conhecimento, e que nos auxiliam a dar um passo a mais na compreensão da relação entre razão e emoção. Em primeiro lugar, apresentamos a ideia dos marcadores somáticos, de Damasio, que elucida o papel dos afetos no desenvolvimento do pensamento racional. Em segundo lugar, observamos que indivíduos psicopatas apresentam uma capacidade reduzida em diferentes esferas da vida, com evidente diminuição na capacidade de ligar sentimentos negativos a normas morais, o que leva a um comportamento moral inadequado e interfere na capacidade deliberativa. Por fim, apresentamos a teoria de Shaun Nichols acerca da Affective Resonance: normas que possuem respaldo afetivo (principalmente negativo) possuem vantagens de transmissão cultural, em detrimento de normas afetivamente neutras. Estes estudos comprovam a importância dos afetos para o pensamento racional e para a manutenção e propagação de normas e regras morais. A ideia principal aqui defendida é a de que há uma estreita relação entre razão e emoção. Ao elucidar esta relação, podemos aprofundar os estudos sobre a condição humana, em especial a razão e a moral.

During the past two decades, there has been a significant growth of sociological studies into the ‘body pedagogics’ of cultural transmission, reproduction and change. Rejecting the tendency to over-valorise cognitive information, these investigations have explored the importance of corporeal capacities, habits and techniques in the processes associated with belonging to specific ‘ways of life’. Focused on practical issues associated with ‘knowing how’ to operate within specific cultures, however, body pedagogic analyses have been less effective at accounting for the incarnation of cultural values. Addressing this limitation, with reference to the radically diverse norms involved historically and contemporarily in ‘vélo worlds’, I develop Dewey’s pragmatist transactionalism by arguing that the social, material and intellectual processes involved in learning physical techniques inevitably entail a concurrent entanglement with, and development of, values.

This article discusses the role of colonial oppression in creating conflicting perspectives in the reproduction of dance as Indigenous cultural heritage. The debate on kahiko, the ancient Hawaiian dance, of which practice was severely controlled and then revived through the cultural renaissance, demonstrates that the radical deprivation of the practice has created multiple understandings of the dance among different practitioners. Of primary importance in these respects is the intergenerational divide within the dance community, manifest in the critical perspective of the post-renaissance variant of kahiko, which highlights the “continuity” of the practice through the colonial rupture.

Nowadays communication in foreign language learning gain prominence. Moreover, it is revealed that learning the grammatical structures and vocabularies are not sufficient to obtain proficiency in the language. Foreign language learning is a complex process involving not only the linguistic content but also the cultural norms of the target language. The inseparable relationship between culture and language divulges that mastering a language is impossible without learning the culture of that language. Consequently, the course books used for teaching a foreign language should promote communication abilities of learners via increasing the students’ cultural awareness. This study aimed to evaluate “cultural transmission through teaching Turkish as a foreign language course books” versus teaching Persian as a foreign language. The evaluation of the “Learning Persian” book series and “Hitit course book 2” from the viewpoint of the cultural transmission divulged that both consist of factors that present Turkish and Persian cultures and succeed in transmitting their culture to learners. The subjects of course books represent the reality about the target culture. They are chosen from the authentic texts and basic real-life experience areas. Literature has considered very important in Persian learning book while environmental issues are emphasized in “Hitit” course book.

In this study, we documented traditional knowledge of edible plants in an indigenous community in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico and analyzed sociodemographic factors (age, education, and lingu...

This article examines various attempts in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that sought to repackage and reorganize kabbalistic knowledge through the compilation of lexicons to one of the most sacred texts in the Jewish mystical canon, the Zohar. By considering the Zoharic lexicon ʾImrei binah, written by Yissakhar Baer ben Petaḥyah Moshe, printed in Prague in 1610, in diachronic and synchronic contexts, the article exposes competing strategies adopted by Jewish mystics to transmit the linguistic and theosophical layers of the Zohar. I will place and discuss lexicons to the Zohar within broader questions of cultural transmission and textuality, revealing the modalities through which these works generated meaning for Jewish and non-Jewish readers. As Kabbalah came to occupy an important role in the intellectual exchange between Jews and Christians in this period, Zoharic lexicons and other study guides played a major role as cultural mediators.

Aspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural variation in how and from whom learning occurred. Learning patterns and community perceptions of task difficulty were assessed through interviews. We found no relationship between task difficulty, age of acquisition, and oblique transmission, and a weak but positive relationship between task difficulty and rates of teaching. While same-sex transmission was normative in both societies, tasks ranked as more difficult were more likely to be transmitted by men among the BaYaka, but not among the Hadza, potentially reflecting cross-cultural differences in the sexual division of subsistence and teaching labor. Further, the BaYaka were more likely to report learning via teaching, and less likely to report learning via observation, than the Hadza, possibly owing to differences in socialization practices.RéSUMé: Certains aspects de l'histoire de la vie humaine et de la cognition, comme la longue enfance et le recours intensif à l'enseignement, ont théoriquement évolué pour faciliter l'acquisition de tâches complexes. Le présent article examine empiriquement la relation entre la difficulté des tâches de subsistance et l'âge d'acquisition, les taux d'enseignement et les taux de transmission oblique chez les chasseurs-cueilleurs Hadza et BaYaka de Tanzanie et de la République du Congo. Nous avons également examiné les variations interculturelles sur la façon dont l'apprentissage se fait et auprès de qui. Les modèles d'apprentissage et les perceptions de la communauté concernant la difficulté des tâches ont été évalués par le biais d'entretiens. Nous n'avons trouvé aucune relation entre la difficulté de la tâche, l'âge d'acquisition et la transmission oblique, et une relation faible mais positive entre la difficulté de la tâche et les taux d'enseignement. Alors que la transmission entre personnes de même sexe était normative dans les deux sociétés, les tâches classées comme plus difficiles étaient plus susceptibles d'être transmises par les hommes chez les BaYaka, mais pas chez les Hadza, ce qui reflète potentiellement les différences interculturelles dans la division sexuelle touchant le travail impliqué dans la subsistance et l'enseignement. En outre, les BaYaka étaient plus susceptibles que les Hadza de déclarer qu'ils apprenaient au moyen de l'enseignement et moins susceptibles d'apprendre par observation, peut-être en raison de différences dans les pratiques de socialisation.

This paper examines how innovative skills and knowledge are transmitted and acquired among adolescents in two hunter-gatherer communities, the Aka of southern Central African Republic and the Chabu of southwestern Ethiopia. Modes of transmission and processes of social learning are addressed. Innovation as well as social learning have been hypothesized to be key features of human cumulative culture, enhancing the fitness and survival of individuals in diverse environments. The innovation literature indicates adult males are more innovative than children and female adults and therefore predicts that adolescents will seek out adult males. Further, the mode of transmission should be oblique (i.e., learning from adults other than parents). Thus, learning of innovations should be oblique or horizontal rather than vertical, with adolescents paying particular attention to “successful” innovative individuals (prestige bias). The social learning literature indicates that complex skills or knowledge is likely to be learned through teaching, and therefore that teaching will be an important process in the transmission of innovations. In-depth and semi-structured interviews, informal observations, and systematic free-listing were used to evaluate these hypotheses. The study found that (1) cultural context patterned whether or not adolescents sought out adult male or female innovators; (2) oblique modes of transmission were mentioned with greater frequency than horizontal or vertical modes; (3) knowledge and skill bias was notable and explicitly linked by the adolescents to reproductive effort; and (4) teaching was biased toward same-sex individuals and was an important but not an exclusive means of transmitting complex skills and social knowledge.

How long a newly emerging trait will stay in a population is a fundamental but rarely asked question in cultural evolution. To tackle this question, the distribution and mean of the time to extinction of a discrete cultural trait are derived for models with overlapping generations, in which trait transmission occurs from multiple role models to a single newborn and may fail with a certain probability. We explore two models. The first is a Moran-type model, which allows us to derive the exact analytical formula for the mean time to extinction of a trait in a finite population. The second is a branching process, which assumes an infinitely large population and allows us to derive approximate analytical formulae for the distribution and mean of the time to extinction in the first model under a large population size. We show that in the first model, the mean time to extinction apparently diverges (becomes so large that even numerical computation is impractical) under a certain parameter condition as the population size tends to infinity. Using the second model, we explain the underlying mechanism of the apparent divergence found in the first model and derive the mathematical condition for this divergence in terms of transmission efficiency and the number of role models per newborn. When this mathematical condition is satisfied in the second model, the probability of extinction is less than 1, and the mean extinction time does not exist. In addition, we find that in both models, the time to extinction of the trait becomes longer as the number of role models per individual increases and as cultural transmission becomes more efficient.

High-fidelity cultural transmission, rather than brute intelligence, is the secret of our species’ success, or so many cultural evolutionists claim. It has been selected because it ensures the spread, stability and longevity of beneficial cultural traditions, and it supports cumulative cultural change. To play these roles, however, fidelity must be a causally-efficient property of cultural transmission. This is where the grain problem comes in and challenges the explanatory potency of fidelity. Assessing the degree of fidelity of any episode or mechanism of cultural transmission always depends upon an investigator’s choice of grain of description at which cultural traditions are being studied. The fidelity of cultural transmission then appears to be relative to the granularity at which one approaches cultural variation, and since there is a multiplicity of grains of description by which the same tradition can be studied, there results a multiplicity of measures of fidelity for a same event or mechanism of cultural transmission. If this is correct, because fidelity is always relative to the grain of description dictated by the local and specific research interests of the investigator, then there seems to be no fact of the matter as to whether cultural transmission is faithful or not, independently from a researcher’s framework of analysis. The aims of this paper are to offer a conceptual clarification of the grain problem in cultural evolution, to assess its causes, to unpack its epistemological implications, and to examine its reach and consequences for a science of cultural evolution.

The article shows that the future is multivariate, the world has become anomalous and entered a period of global instability and unsteadiness and a new model of civilizational development is being formed. The choice of future development takes place in the sphere of culture on the basis of a value conflict, during which the selection of experience worthy of cultural transmission is carried out. Therefore, the very choice of the future civilizational development is not unambiguous. Values create a holistic image of a person’s life world, expressing an attitude towards reality. The filling of existing values with a new content is the result of the rooting of new worldview meanings, which reflect the state of culture as an environment in the depths of which the synthesis of traditional and emerging new civilizational experience is constantly taking place. On this path, strategies that preserve the basic values of the previous type of development compete with innovative aspirations focused on the search for new life meanings and updating the content of values that meet modern realities. New values are born in the depths of the old culture and form the shoots of the future civilization.

Mobbing, a collective harassment of a predator by multiple prey species, is ubiquitous in animals. In birds, it is often prompted by specific vocalizations (mobbing calls) produced by an individual that detects a predator; this attracts nearby conspecifics and heterospecifics in a joint assault on the predator. Mutual recognition of mobbing calls among heterospecifics, even those distantly related, is widespread in birds and learning appears important for its acquisition and maintenance. Yet, the evidence for learned recognition is mostly indirect and the specific learning mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, I provide experimental evidence that free-living birds (wood warblers, Phylloscopus sibilatrix) can learn to recognize novel heterospecific mobbing calls through interspecific social learning, by associating mobbing calls of a previously unknown species with those of the already recognized heterospecifics during joint mobbing events. Moreover, individuals retained the learned recognition of novel mobbing calls over at least 2 weeks. These results illustrate interspecific social learning as one of the mechanisms underlying the widespread mutual recognition of mobbing calls among bird species. This mechanism of learning is likely to be common in the wild, enabling naive individuals to utilize a wide set of possible information sources, and result in a rapid cultural transmission of novel antipredator signal recognition within avian communities.

During the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods, a specific type of abstract and geometric imagery was being carved on natural outcrops and boulders in the landscapes of western Europe. Often known as Atlantic Rock Art, this prehistoric carving tradition is renowned for its cup-and-ring motifs, cup-marks, wavy grooves and other types of circular imagery. These can be found in the modern countries of Spain, Portugal, Britain and Ireland, where the tradition shares striking similarities. Although these resemblances had been noted in the mid-1950s, they were never fully understood and seldomly studied systematically. This paper offers a discussion on the multi-scalar interdisciplinary methodology used on a large-scale project which studied the phenomenon of Atlantic Rock Art, assessing its similarities and differences between study areas in the aforementioned countries. This approach focused on a number of features of the rock art, extending the investigation beyond the motifs which are obviously similar. The different scales of analysis focused on small details, such as the iconography and carving techniques, followed by a larger scale related to the rock medium, and a final wider scale, that of the landscape in which the carvings are located. The investigation was carried out with a multi-faceted perspective and a combination of methods which included computer modelling for spatial analysis and digital recording techniques, contrasted with more traditional and sensorial/experiential approaches. Results revealed a carving tradition which encompassed many resemblances but was still capable of maintaining unique characters. The study demonstrated the importance of rock art in the narrative of prehistoric Atlantic Europe, contributing to a clearer insight into the connectivity and cultural transmission taking place on the Atlantic seaboard during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.

A leading idea of cultural evolutionary theory is that for human cultures to undergo evolutionary change, cultural transmission must generally serve as a high-fidelity copying process. In analogy to genetic inheritance, the high-fidelity of human cultural transmission would act as a safeguard against the transformation and loss of cultural information, thus ensuring both the stability and longevity of cultural traditions. Cultural fidelity would also serve as the key difference-maker between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, explaining why only us humans, with our uniquely high-fidelity transmission capabilities, are capable of evolving and sustaining complex traditions. But what does it mean for cultural transmission to be more or less faithful? This paper has two objectives. The first is to clarify the meaning and uses of the concept of cultural fidelity and to evaluate their explanatory import. I argue that cultural evolutionists use several fidelity concepts (episodic-, propensity-, and generalized-fidelity), concepts which I set to define and clarify. The second objective is to challenge the explanatory significance of a general notion of fidelity (generalized-fidelity) as being both explanatorily meaningful and operationalizable. I conclude that if fidelity is to serve as an explanation of the key differences between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, then the concept will have to be redesigned and rely on different assumptions.

Teaching / learning a foreign language means not only teaching / learning grammar, vocabulary and language skills, but also teaching / learning the cultural elements of that language. Teaching a foreign language in a literal manner is possible by teaching the culture that shapes that language. For this reason, the teacher who teaches a foreign language is also a cultural teacher. Due to the diversity of the elements that make up the culture, it is not possible to transfer all the items that make up the foreign language culture during the course and with the course tools. Undoubtedly, one of the most important materials of cultural transfer is coursebooks as those are originated from the society that speaks that language and carries the culture of that language. For foreign language teaching, the texts in the coursebooks must be consciously selected; which is an efficient means of cultural transmission in the area of cross-cultural encounters. As a matter of fact, one of the main objectives of language teaching is cultural skill acquisition according to the Common European Framework (CEF) of Reference for Languages (Learning-Teaching-Evaluation). In this study, how the cultural elements in the “Le Nouveau Taxi 1 Methode de Francais” textbook used in the teaching of French as a foreign language was transferred to the learners based on the criteria of the Common Application Text was examined. The sociocultural elements, which are interspersed with the educational content of the study and accompany the dialogues, have been designed in accordance with the A 1 level learning objectives of the learners and it has been thought that the educational content is sufficient to carry out the transfer of the target culture.

In this article I present a formal model for the cultural evolution of counterintuitive cultural messages, specifically, religious ideas. This model tries to account for the reproduction of counterintuitive religious ideas by introducing a new parameter: the means of cultural communication by which those ideas are transmitted. Means of cultural communication can be classified alongside a continuum that goes from the cognitively optimal to the cognitively costly. Very simple intuitive messages may replicate weakly if they are transmitted through cognitively costly means of communication, and conversely, highly counterintuitive messages will reproduce without difficulty if they are transmitted through cognitively optimal means of communication. The formal model I propose in this study is based on a new version of the model put forward by Joseph Henrich to account for the Tasmanian case of cultural loss.

Although the Reduction Principle for rates of mutation, migration, and recombination has been proved for large populations under constant selection, the fate of modifiers of these evolutionary forces under frequency-dependent or fluctuating selection is, in general, less well understood. Here we study modifiers of transmission, which include modifiers of mutation and oblique cultural transmission, under frequency-dependent and cyclically fluctuating selection, and develop models for which the Reduction Principle fails. We show that whether increased rates of transmission can evolve from an equilibrium at which there is zero transmission (for example, no mutation) depends on the number of alleles among which transmission is occurring. In addition, properties of the null-transmission state are clarified.

Informal social hierarchies within small human groups are argued to be based on prestige, dominance, or a combination of the two (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Prestige-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by the admiration and respect they receive from others due to their competence within valued domains. This type of hierarchy provides benefits for subordinates such as social learning opportunities and both private and public goods. In contrast, dominance-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by their capacity to win fights, and coerce or intimidate others. This type of hierarchy produces costs in subordinates due to its aggressive and intimidating nature. Given the benefits and costs associated with these types of social hierarchies for subordinates, we hypothesised that prestige and dominance cues are better recalled and transmitted than social rank cues that do not elicit high prestige or dominance associations (i.e. medium social rank cues). Assuming that for the majority of the population who are not already at the top of the social hierarchy it is more important to avoid the costs of dominance-based hierarchies than to obtain the benefits of prestige-based hierarchies, we further hypothesised that dominance cues are better transmitted than prestige cues. We conducted a recall-based transmission chain experiment with 30 chains of four generations each (N = 120). Participants read and recalled descriptions of prestigious, dominant, and medium social rank footballers, and their recall was passed to the next participant within their chain. As predicted, we found that both prestige cues and dominance cues were better transmitted than medium social rank cues. However, we did not find support for our prediction of the better transmission of dominance cues than prestige cues. We discuss whether the results might be explained by a specific social-rank content transmission bias or by a more general emotional content transmission bias.

The sharp distinction between biological traits and culturally based traits, which had long been standard in evolutionary approaches to behavior, was blurred in the early 1980s by mathematical models that allowed a co-dependent evolution of genetic transmission and cultural information. Niche-construction theory has since added another contrast to standard evolutionary theory, in that it views niche construction as a cause of evolutionary change rather than simply a product of selection. While offering a new understanding of the coevolution of genes, culture, and human behavior, niche-construction models also invoke multivariate causality, which require multiple time series to resolve. The empirical challenge lies in obtaining time-series data on causal pathways involved in the coevolution of genes, culture, and behavior. This is a significant issue in archeology, where time series are often sparse and causal behaviors are represented only by proxies in the material record.

Significance Correlation between genotypes and phenotypes can be produced by genetic nurturing, namely the effect of parents’ genotypes on their offspring’s phenotypes through the parents’ phenotypes. Population subdivision and assortative mating can give rise to correlations between genotypes and phenotypes similar to those due to genetic nurturing. Variances and correlations may not reveal causal relationships in the presence of these complexities. We analyze mechanistic models of genetic nurturing, population subdivision, and assortative mating and compare these with results obtained within the framework of modern causal analysis. Our results clarify statistical signals emanating from correlations between nontransmitted alleles and offspring phenotypes and reveal difficulties with standard linear models in the interpretation of heritability, in particular, the concept of missing heritability., Genetic nurturing, the effect of parents’ genotypes on offspring phenotypes through parental phenotypic transmission, can be modeled in terms of gene–culture interactions. This paper first uses a simple one-locus, two-phenotype gene–culture cotransmission model to compute the effect of genetic nurturing in terms of regression of children’s phenotypes on transmitted and nontransmitted alleles. With genetic nurturing, interpreting heritability and hence the meaning of “missing heritability” becomes problematic. Other factors, for example, population subdivision and assortative mating, generate similar signals to those of genetic nurturing, namely, correlation between parents’ nontransmitted alleles and children’s phenotypes. Corrections must be made for these to isolate the signal of genetic nurturing. Finally, a unified causal framework is constructed for genetic nurturing, population subdivision, and assortative mating. Causal and noncausal paths from transmitted and nontransmitted alleles to children’s phenotypes are identified and investigated in the presence of genetic nurturing, population subdivision, and assortative mating. Using causal analysis, assumptions made in inferring direct and indirect effects are then clarified and evaluated in a broader causal context.

Individuals’ ethical sociability and communicational skills enjoy core importance in their societal and organizational functioning. Generally, a fear is felt regarding the students doing MA English, at the universities of Pakhtunkhwa province; the fear is that the students who do MA English leads to weakening of their practice of their socio-cultural values. This apprehension was looked into by analyzing the role that particular, the teachers of Linguistics can play in the transmission, preservation, and promotion of their socio-cultural values; the teachers can help the learners develop an understanding of sociability skills and appropriate socio-communicative skills. The socio-cultural sphere was delimited to the aspects of ethico-sociability and socio-communicative skills. Three public sector universities, namely Gomal University, Kohat University, and Bannu University, from south Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province served as the universe of the study. Students studying at master’s Level in their Departments of English, served as research population, for evaluating the teachers’ role, in the promotion of ethico-sociability and socio-communicative skills. The data was collected through the interview method. Results show that most of the teachers of Linguistics promote the learners’ understanding of social etiquette, social norms, and expectations of politeness, appropriacy, communicative competence, cultural transmission, effective communication, and sociability skills.

As evidence from sign languages is increasingly used to investigate the process of language emergence and evolution, it is important to understand the conditions that allow for sign languages to persist. We build on a mathematical model of sign language persistence (i.e. protection from loss) which takes into account the genetic transmission of deafness, the cultural transmission of sign language and marital patterns (Aoki & Feldman, 1991). We use agent-based modeling techniques and draw inspiration from the wealth of genetic and cultural data on the sign language Kata Kolok to move towards a less abstract model of sign language persistence. In a set of experiments we explore how sign language persistence is affected by language transmission types, the distribution of deaf alleles, population size and marital patterns. We highlight the value of using agent-based modeling for this type of research, which allows for the incorporation of real-world data into model development.

This article studies the influence of cultural norms on economic outcomes. We combine detailed information on second-generation female immigrants with historical data from their ancestral source countries to see how the cultural endowment affects current decisions on work and fertility. We show that results using the standard approach are somewhat sensitive to context and specification. We then extend to reveal an education gradient for cultural assimilation: lower-educated women exhibit a strong influence of cultural variables while higher-educated women show no influence at all. We gather and present evidence on several potential mechanisms for the education gradient.

La ecología política contemporánea ha mostrado un creciente interés por la relación entre los conocimientos locales y la transmisión cultural en diferentes escenarios de crisis. El objetivo del presente artículo consiste en mostrar que los conocimientos locales frente a situaciones de desastre comprenden estrategias cuya reproducción social no es consecuencia ni de la influencia de la tradición, ni de esquemas de adaptación, sino que se transmiten en términos de herencia ecológica y cultural. Por un lado, elaboraremos una crítica al concepto de resiliencia y, por el otro, señalaremos que las perspectivas tipológicas sobre los desastres a nivel de las comunidades no hacen justicia a la capacidad de éstas para hacer frente a eventos catastróficos. Abrevando de la noción antropológica de cultura como práctica, estableceremos un enfoque sobre los conocimientos locales a través de la articulación de la percepción del entorno y la percepción del riesgo. Argumentaremos que la génesis de dichos conocimientos locales se asienta sobre la noción de herencia ecológica y cultural en tanto mecanismo de transferencia intergeneracional. Esta caracterización de las dinámicas de enseñanza-aprendizaje tiene implicaciones no sólo para comprender improntas conservacionistas, sino también para comprender cómo se suscitan procesos de innovación en términos de cambio cultural.

This article points out some “loopholes” in the traditional Chinese-English translation theories, and proposes several transcreation theories to countermeasure the “loopholes”, illustrating non-equivalences. In particular, the article proposes a novel translation/transcreation theory that incorporates the writing field, in both the source and target languages, into the traditional translation field. This is for the purpose of cultural transmission and integration. In addition, the article illustrates the relationship between translation and writing by dissecting the translation/transcreation process into two processes: understanding and writing. Moreover, it suggests that the transcreation field develop some criteria, such as: fidelity, flexibility and creativity, and that all the science, social science and humanities subareas in the transcreation field are categorized according to these criteria. In order to support the transcreation theories and multidisciplinary translation theories proposed in this article, some typical examples and transcreation techniques that push the envelope of existing transcreation theories are provided. This article may shed new light on the limitations of, and possible solutions to, machine translation. It may also answer questions like: “Is understanding unimportant to machine translation?”

The environment increased complexity required more neural functions to develop in the hominin brains, and the hominins adapted to the complexity by developing a bigger brain with a greater interconnection between its parts. Thus, complex environments drove the growth of the brain. In about two million years during hominin evolution, the brain increased three folds in size, one of the largest and most complex amongst mammals, relative to body size. The size increase has led to anatomical reorganization and complex neuronal interactions in a relatively small skull. At birth, the human brain is only about 20% of its adult size. That facilitates the passage through the birth canal. Therefore, the human brain, especially cortex, develops postnatally in a rich stimulating environment with continuous brain wiring and rewiring and insertion of billions of new neurons. One of the consequence is that in the newborn brain, neuroplasticity is always turned “on” and it remains active throughout life, which gave humans the ability to adapt to complex and often hostile environments, integrate external experiences, solve problems, elaborate abstract ideas and innovative technologies, store a lot of information. Besides, hominins acquired unique abilities as music, language, and intense social cooperation. Overwhelming ecological, social, and cultural challenges have made the human brain so unique. From these events, as well as the molecular genetic changes that took place in those million years, under the pressure of natural selection, derive the distinctive cognitive abilities that have led us to complex social organizations and made our species successful.

The accumulated copying error model (ACE) combines findings on the proportional nature of human visual perception error with cultural transmission theory. Previous studies have employed ACE to provide population-level expectations of the coefficient of variation (CV) of a continuous trait, such as the thickness of ceramic vessels. To date, empirical departures from expected CV values have been interpreted as evidence of biased cultural transmission or functional constraints without consideration for how population size might affect population-level cultural variation in the presence of proportional perception error. Here, I employ agent-based simulation experiments to investigate the ways in which population size affects the CV of a continuous cultural trait under different cultural transmission mechanisms. Results show that the CV of a continuous cultural trait is a function of its cultural equivalent N and effective population size (Ne) as well as the relative strength of cultural selection. The results also demonstrate that different combinations of N and cultural transmission yield identical CV values. The study highlights a new set of difficulties with inferring individual-level process—the mechanism(s) by which cultural information is transmitted among individuals—from population-level pattern—the CV of a continuous cultural trait. In light of these results, I identify and discuss one avenue through which we might improve our ability to infer past cultural transmission from archeological data.

This study emphasises the interdependence between physical capital formation and the cultural transmission of human capital-promoting attitudes and values. It demonstrates how this interdependence establishes a powerful propagation mechanism that generates multiple, divergent paths of economic development. It also highlights the role of physical capital formation in expanding the conditions that are propitious to path-dependency in models of cultural transmission: Even in the absence of a cultural complementarity, the long-run equilibrium is sensitive to the initial distribution of cultural attitudes among the population, as long as the combined effects of physical capital formation and social segregation permeate the process of cultural transmission.

Language plays a critical role in an individual’s adapting to a community and developing a sense of friendship and belonging. In its absence, Humans suffer from a lack of trust in each other since they cannot speak in the same language. If they fail to communicate, this incapability leads to problems. Additionally, individual and common social communication can beperformed by language education, as well and language education is directly associated with the cultural transmission. Kyrgyzstan Turkey Manas University functions as an educational bridge between Turkey and Kyrgyzstan and offers education in Turkish (Turkey Turkish). Moreover, there are Turkey Turkish departments at Humanitarian Social Sciences University and Yusuf Balasagun Kyrgyz National University in Kyrgyzstan. The ongoing Language Reinforcement Project annually offers training to the students of these departments of the contracted organizations for six months. According to the scholars’ views how the Kyrgyz students who had the chance to come to Turkey via the Language Reinforcement Projectwere affected by the internship in general and how the components of this project will contribute to Turkish and Kyrgyz peopleare the research questions of the study.The sample of the research consists of ten volunteer scholars working at Yusuf Balasagun Kyrgyz National University in Kyrgyzstan in the Fall Term of the 2018-2019 Academic Year. Six female and four male scholars participated in the research. This study is a qualitative research study and the data collection tool of the study is the interview. According to the results of the study, the scholars expressed their satisfaction with the students’ internship or training in Turkey as well as the other advantages.

Grandparents are valued in traditional and contemporary Aboriginal societies. In this paper we summarize traditional knowledge from Manitoba Aboriginal experiences, and we provide data from contemporary on-reserve grandmothers. Data for this study were collected in 2007 in 16 First nations Manitoba communities. Open-ended semi-structured in-person interviews were conducted in maternal-child centers that provide programs for developmental health for children and their parents (prenatal to age 6). Of the 100 people interviewed, ten of those were grandmothers, and their stories are analyzed in this paper. Results showed that grandmothers provided cultural transmission to subsequent generations, ensured child safety, provided acceptance and care for grandchildren, were challenged by inadequate and unsafe housing and communities, had difficulty proving educational supports for grandchildren, were supported by a network of kin, found community support inconsistent, needed to make a living, and needed more health supports. Implications for policy and research are given at the end of the paper.

We examine the historical determinants of differences in preferences for work across societies today. Our hypothesis is that a society’s work ethic depends on the role that labor has played in it historically, as an input in agricultural production: societies that have for centuries depended on the cultivation of crops with high returns to labor effort will work longer hours and develop a preference for working hard. We formalize this prediction in the context of a model of endogenous preference formation, with altruistic parents that can invest in reducing their offsprings’ disutility from work. To empirically found our model, we construct an index of potential agricultural labor intensity, that captures the suitability of a location for the cultivation of crops with high estimated returns to labor in their production. We find that this index positively predicts work hours and attitudes towards work in contemporary European regions. We find support for the hypothesis of cultural transmission, by examining the correlation between potential labor intensity in the parents’ country of origin and hours worked by children of European immigrants in the US.

Literary fiction has been recognised as a vehicle of cultural transmission that can be used to reflect on real issues. If used as data sources, sports novels may be useful for making sense of the c...

China's civil examination system (keju), an incredibly long-lived institution, has a persistent impact on human capital outcomes today. Using the variation in the density of jinshi—the highest qualification—across 278 Chinese prefectures in the Ming-Qing period (c. 1368–1905) to proxy for this effect, we find that a doubling of jinshi per 10,000 population leads to an 8.5% increase in years of schooling in 2010. The persistent effect of keju can be attributed to a multitude of channels including cultural transmission, educational infrastructure, social capital and, to a lesser extent, political elites.

O debate proposto busca discutir o papel e a importância da escola como um espaço de mediação e transmissão cultural, a partir da síntese dos conhecimentos científicos escolares e os saberes e experiências sociais, ou pelo menos assim deveria ser. A cultura escolar, resultado dos processos de escolarização e a cultura social produzida na vida prática, devem necessariamente se relacionar integrando campos, estruturas e formas de concepção e compreensão do mundo. Poucos lugares sociais possuem a diversidade e a representatividade da escola, essa condição também se apresenta como uma possibilidade e um imperativo categórico, na construção de uma sociedade mais justa, tolerante, equitativa e democrática. Para isso, nossos professores precisam aprender melhor, como podem ensinar com mais eficiência e eficácia e precisam de formação contínua, ante os desafios e dilemas da educação. Nossas alunas e alunos precisam ‘reaprender’ a aprender, valorizando seus conhecimentos sociais e histórias de vida, também formas de saber, orientando as carências na vida prática. A escola em sua diversidade e pluralidade se tornou um lugar onde se pode ‘existir’ e a educação é o conteúdo dessa ‘resistência’ contra o abuso, preconceito, racismo e toda a violência, a escola tem que ser melhor, porque nossos alunos e alunas precisam ser melhores. O conhecimento aprendido/construído sobre a vida e a diversidade, cria uma qualidade explicativa /compreensiva superior, transformando a própria realidade, ou no mínimo parâmetros compreensivos mais coerentes. Como resultado construiremos uma sociedade que refletirá a escola e não o contrário.

Nick Martin was a doctoral student of mine at the University of Birmingham in the mid 1970s. In this review, I discuss two of Nick’s earliest and most seminal contributions to the field of behavior genetics. First, Martin and Eaves’ (1977) extension of the model-fitting approach to multivariate data, which laid the theoretical groundwork for a generation of multivariate behavior genetic studies. Second, the Martin et al.’s (1978) manuscript on the power of the classical twin design, which showed that thousands of twin pairs would be required in order to reliably estimate components of variance, and has served as impetus for the formation of large-scale twin registries across the world. I discuss these contributions against the historical backdrop of a time when we and others were struggling with the challenge of figuring out how to incorporate gene-by-environment interaction, gene–environment correlation, mate selection and cultural transmission into more complex genetic models of human behavior.

Memes are units of cultural transmission. They transfer information and reproduce in a specific media, transforming during the process, spreading like a virus. However, the meme does not self-replicate: it requires subjects to retransmit it. The scenarios of new technologies and communication places the user in a fundamental place for their active modality and their capacity for appropriation, resignification and production of discourses. This paper explains the results of surveys carried out on users and consumers of political memes on political satire fanpages during the end of Enrique Pena Nieto’s six-year term, in Mexico. From these arises the conclusion that memes are an extension of political culture and the present context in all its dynamics of creation, diffusion, appropriation and reproduction.

This study addresses a gap in the study-abroad literature, examining both student and host family experiences of two-way cultural transmission. Interviews, participant observation and reflective jo...

This study empirically analyzes the role of culture in determining working behaviors of American women whose ancestors/fathers were born outside of the United States. The effect of culture on these women’s working behaviors are studied by using 1970 and 2017 US Census data. Female labor force participation (FLFP) from the woman’s heritage country is defined as a cultural proxy for the working behavior of a second-generation immigrant woman. Cultural proxies are found to be positive and statistically significant for women who kept their heritage languages (HLs) when controlling for characteristics of the women, their husbands and families. This study indicates that cultural transmission is statistically significant for women whose social networks are strong. The main findings show that women who kept their HLs and their ancestors/fathers belong to the countries with higher/lower FLFP rates; they tend to work more/less hours in the US, respectively. Also, the results are robust when controlling origin country characteristics and employing instrumental variable and husband’s culture.

There has been increasing interest in the evolutionary study of religion, but perfunctory fractionalization has limited our ability to explain how and why religion evolved, evaluate religion’s current adaptive value, and assess its role in contemporary decision-making. To move beyond piecemeal analyses of religion, I have recently offered an integrative evolutionary framework that approaches religions as adaptive systems. I argue that religions are an adaptive complex of traits consisting of cognitive, neurological, affective, behavioral, and developmental features that are organized into a self-regulating feedback system. Here I explore four advantages of this systemic approach to religion: it avoids definitional problems that have plagued the study of religion, affords a contextual understanding of religious belief, informs current debates within the evolutionary study of religion, and provides links to both the natural sciences and humanities. I argue that the systemic approach offers the strongest potential for real progress and broad application of evolutionary theory to the study of religion.

The 21st century is a highly informationized era. Computer network has penetrated into all areas of people's lives and brought an unprecedented revolution to the way of cultural transmission. The development and popularization of computer network has had a profound impact on college students. Compared with traditional culture, network culture, as an information culture based on Internet, has some characteristics that traditional culture can't match. The combination of campus culture and computer network, so that students can more easily contact the campus culture through the computer network, at the same time, the correct, appropriate and timely use of computer network is a problem faced by our educators. This paper discusses the construction of campus culture under the new media environment of computer network. It is of great significance and value for the spread and development of campus culture and for college students to be more active in understanding, contacting and being influenced by good campus culture.

Funding: ECG is funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (UF160081). RFL and LZ are funded by the BBSRC (BB/R008736/2). LL was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Grant to Luke Rendell (among other recipients; grant reference RPG-2013-367) Humpback whale song is an extraordinary example of vocal cultural behaviour. In northern popula-tions, the complex songs show long-lasting traditions that slowly evolve, while in the South Pacific, pe-riodic revolutions occur when songs are adopted from neighbouring populations and rapidly spread. In this species, vocal learning cannot be studied in the laboratory, learning is instead inferred from the songs’ complexity and patterns of transmission. Here, we used individual-based cultural evolutionary simulations of the entire Southern and Northern Hemisphere humpback whale populations to formalise this process of inference. We modelled processes of song mutation and patterns of contact among popu-lations and compared our model with patterns of song theme sharing measured in South Pacific popula-tions. Low levels of mutation in combination with rare population interactions were sufficient to closely fit the pattern of diversity in the South Pacific, including the distinctive pattern of West-to-East revolu-tions. Interestingly, the same learning parameters that gave rise to revolutions in the Southern Hemi-sphere simulations gave rise to evolutionary patterns of cultural evolution in the Northern Hemisphere populations. Our study demonstrates how cultural evolutionary approaches can be used to make infer-ences about the learning processes underlying cultural transmission and how they might generate emergent population-level processes. Publisher PDF