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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.

Supernatural agent concepts are regarded as a defining trait of religion. The interaction of the minimally counterintuitive (MCI) mnemonic effect and the hypersensitive agency detection device (HADD) may be employed to explain the universal presence of concepts of gods and deities. Using the measure of free-recall, a broad model of cultural transmission investigated this pan-cultural transmission bias with a large age-representative sample (3 to 86 years; N = 764) in UK and China. Results were analyzed by four-way mixed ANOVA considering counterintuitiveness, familiarity, ontological category, and delay, and with age as a covariate. A significant interaction of counterintuitiveness × HADD was found for both UK and China samples. These findings support assertions that supernatural agent concepts are more easily transmitted than other concepts because the present study finds that concepts similar to supernatural agents were more readily recalled.

This article introduces an agent-based and a system-dynamics model investigating the cultural transmission of frequent collective rituals. It focuses on social function and cognitive attraction as independently affecting transmission. The models focus on the historical context of early Christian meals, where various theoretically inspiring trends in cultural transmission of rituals can be observed. The primary purpose of the article is to contribute to theorizing about cultural transmission of rituals by suggesting a clear operationalization of their social function and cognitive attraction. Furthermore, the article challenges recent trends in the field by providing a theoretically feasible model for how, under certain conditions, cognitive attraction can influence the transmission to a relatively greater extent than social function. In the system dynamics model we reproduce the results of our agent-based model while putting some of our basic operational assumptions under scrutiny. We consider approaching social function and cognitive attraction in isolation as a preliminary but necessary step in the process of creating more complex models of the cultural selection of rituals, where the two aspects will be combined to produce ritual forms with greater correspondence to real-world religious rituals.

We experimentally investigated the influence of context-based biases, such as prestige and popularity, on the preferences for quotations. Participants were presented with random quotes associated to famous or unknown authors (experiment one), or with random quotes presented as popular, i.e. chosen by many previous participants, or unpopular (experiment two). To exclude effects related to the content of the quotations, all participants were subsequently presented with the same quotations, again associated to famous and unknown authors (experiment three), or presented as popular or unpopular (experiment four). Overall, our results showed that context-based biases had no (in case of prestige and conformity), or limited (in case of popularity), effect in determining participants’ choices. Quotations preferred for their content were preferred in general, despite the contextual cues to which they were associated. We conclude discussing how our results fit with the well-known phenomenon of the spread and success (especially digital) of misattributed quotations, and we draw some more general implications for cultural evolution research.

Author(s): Eerkens, JW; de Voogt, A | Abstract: Cubic dice were brought by the Romans to the Low Countries, and are found in small numbers at many archaeological sites dating to the last 2000 years. We report on a systematic analysis of 110 well-dated dice from the Netherlands, showing that shape, pip configuration, and pip style changed significantly for bone and antler dice from the Roman to the recent historical period. Dice predating 650 CE are highly variable in all attributes, those dating between 1100 and 1450 are highly standardized, and those post-dating 1450 CE are standardized for some attributes, such as symmetry and configuration, but variable for others, such as material type. There is also a major shift from “sevens” to “primes” and back to “sevens” pip configuration across these temporal windows, and pip style was simplified over time from a dot-ring-ring pattern to simple dots. We compare these trends to a smaller set of well-dated dice from the United Kingdom and speculate on possible reasons for these changes. The information can be used in future studies in the Netherlands to help date sites and/or isolated finds, and more broadly, can be augmented with similar analyses of dice elsewhere in Eurasia to study ancient interaction networks and the cultural transmission of games involving dice play.

This study used urban legends to examine the effects of a cognitive bias for content which evokes higher levels of emotion on cumulative recall. As with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design was used. One-hundred and twenty participants, aged 16–52, were asked to read and then recall urban legends that provoked both high levels and low levels of emotion and were both positively and negatively valenced. The product of this recall was presented to the next participant in a chain of three generations. A significant effect of emotion level on transmission fidelity was found with high emotion legends being recalled with significantly greater accuracy than low emotion legends. The emotional valence of a legend was found not to have any effect on cumulative recall; thus emotional biases in recall go beyond disgust and can incorporate other emotions such as amusement, interest and surprise. This study is the first to examine an emotion bias in cultural transmission as a general phenomenon without focusing on the emotion of disgust.

Many social animals have cultural traditions that may shape their societies while the social structure can in turn influence how the culture is acquired. Killer whales possess culturally transmitted dialects. The divergence of dialects was thought to occur simultaneously and consistently with the gradual fission of matrilines. In this paper we compare the social associations across matrilineal units, Bayesian phylogeny of dialects and similarity of particular syllables to test whether dialects affect social structure and whether associations or common origin define similarity of call types. We found that neither phylogeny of dialects nor similarity of syllables was correlated to associations between matrilineal units, but similarity of syllables was correlated to phylogeny of dialects for four of the six syllables analysed. The complexity and fluidity of social ties between matrilineal units and the variation in cultural transmission patterns produce a complex relationship between the social network and the socially learned vocalizations.

This study explores the travels of a literary anecdote about ten pieces of advice that a mother gave her daughter on the eve of the latter’s marriage. Tracing the various incarnations of the anecdote from its first attestation in ninth-century Arabic works to later versions in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Italian, Catalan, and Yiddish demonstrates the connectivity of the medieval Mediterranean and the porous nature of political, religious, and linguistic borders when it comes to popular ethical literary texts. Studying the changes introduced in each new incarnation allows us to explore the process of translation and adaptation involved in cultural transmission between different linguistic and religious communities. The travels of the anecdote also highlight the commonalities and differences in normative gender roles in different societies across the medieval Mediterranean.

Inspired by the idea that cognitive systems evoke cultural phenomena, this study tested a theory suggesting precautionary cognitive mechanisms as both a constraint and an enabler of transmission of cultural concepts such as religious rituals. Using ‘restricted range of themes’ as a link between precautionary cognition and religious rituals, this cross cultural study of Zulu communities in sa tested people’s inferences about implications of failure to perform life-stage rituals in order to identify the nature of the presence of precautionary themes in Zulu rituals and any involvement of environmental factors. The results reflected inferences rather than echoing of formal descriptions of rituals, and revealed a consistent affinity between certain threat-domains and specific Zulu rituals: birth and early age rituals evoked the Contamination/Contagion domain, women’s maturity rituals evoked the Decline in Resources domain, marital rituals evoked a mixture of Decline in Resources and Loss of Status domains, and death rituals evoked the Predation/Assault domain. This suggests that precautionary cognition effect on religious rituals is mediated by life-history strategy rather than by ecology factors, and also, that understanding precautionary cognition is crucial for uncovering the real motivations for religious behaviour, as direct reports cannot be taken at face value.

The Indian diaspora in Thailand consists of various groups who have been settled in Thailand for more than a hundred years. However, religion – Hinduism and Sikhism – is one of the key identities that centralize and unite the faiths and followers together. Their religious teachings are taught and transmitted through the family, mainly by the grandparents and parents, the mother in particular. The processes of transmission also involve religious institutions such as temples and gurdwaras, which act as spiritual centres. The structure of the temples teaches the different generations to work and learn from each other for sustainable continuity of their groups. Moreover, the contents of transmission are not only religious concepts, but include their languages, ways of life including how to interact with others. Structuralism and other related concepts are applied in this article. As the young generation of the Indian diaspora is also Thai, globalization influences their perspective and way of life; therefore,...

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements (such as exposure to rats and maggots). Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content (rats and maggots) among Americans but not among Indians. Four subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content (disgusting vs. happy surprises and good news) in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors (like rats), the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news (e.g., the opening of a new public facility). We discuss various possible explanations and implications.

There has been much interest in understanding the operation of shared collective constructs. Cultural models theory is one of the frameworks in cognitive anthropology engaging the interaction between the individual and collective levels of culture in the process of cultural transmission. The present study attempts to produce the cognitive ethnography focusing on shared understanding of prosocial morality in Sweden. It draws on cognitive data associated with the organization of prosocial ideas (formulated as values) in Swedish society, and uses multi-item scales to explore the distribution of this cultural model across the individual minds and on the group level. The study tests a hypothesis that cultural and individual values priorities have distinct demographic predictors when examined separately, and that these predictors reflect their respective differences in the transmission channels. I stress the importance of the interdisciplinary research to account for the process of consolidation of shared collective knowledge into cultural models.

The ‘information cycle’ is an evolutionary model of the processes of gene/culture maintenance and change. This paper reports the first naturalistic experimental study designed to collect information data that can illuminate the mechanisms of ‘culture’ production and sharing in information cycles. It is an analysis of conversation among university students in Taiwan. A junior class of 32 students utilized pencil and paper (P&P) diaries to record conversation topics over a three week period. It was expected that some topics of special interest would be shared widely as they were passed among speakers through repeated information cycles. This type of linear transmission did appear. However, of great interest, the majority of widely shared topics were initiated by larger scales of information cycles, it is argued, specifically popular media, education, social media, ritual, and legal scales, which triggered cascades of conversation sharing. This result indicates that the sharing of cultural information relies on statistical, not linear, transmission, in which topics are shared imprecisely but repeatedly, permitting the construction of shared knowledge. Further, it indicates that culture is shared in a hierarchy of transmission cycles, which differ in space, cycle time, input, and copy fidelity. Further, it indicates that culture must be maintained against depreciation by repeated cycling in information cycles. Cultural transmission is indeed a complex, statistical, multi-scaled process that requires a nested model of information cycles as I have proposed.

Rituals are part of all religious systems and their transmission and stability have exercised many scholars for decades. Within cognitive anthropology competing views of cultural transmission have emerged in recent years in terms of the mechanisms by means of which cultural forms, including rituals, are transmitted and persist (or not) within societies. Two schools of thought focusing on (1) the “epidemiology of representations” and (2) memetic cultural evolution have informed this study’s goal for gaining insight on the plausibility of cultural learning models as opposed to Sperber et al.’s emphasis on meta-representational processes of representation generation. This study examined 11 life-stages Zulu rituals in terms of participants’ (a) knowledge of them; (b) performance of them; and (c) direct observation of them in order to make some initial judgments about the importance of various forms of direct observational learning for ritual transmission. It was found that while knowledge of rituals was high, observance rate was significantly lower, and performance rate was substantially lower. These results tentatively suggest that an emphasis on understanding those cognitive systems (Hazard Precaution, Action Representation) that might constrain ritual representations (and fit within the Sperberian framework) would be the best way to advance justifiable explanations of ritual transmission.

To say Early Confucians advocated the possession of a sense of shame as a means to moral virtue underestimates the tact and forethought they used successfully to mold natural dispositions to experience shame into a system of self, familial, and social governance. Shame represents an adaptive system of emotion, cognition, perception, and behavior in social primates for measurement of social rank. Early Confucians understood the utility of the shame system for promotion of cooperation, and they build and deploy cultural modules – e.g., rituals, titles, punishments – with this in mind. These policies result in subtle alterations to components of the evolved shame system that are detectable in data form contemporary cross-cultural psychology that show that populations in the Confucian diaspora have a unique shame profile compared to Western and non-Western populations. The status of Confucian diaspora populations as outliers in the context of shame is partially explained by appeal to the cultural transmission and historical endurance of relevant Early Confucian cultural modules.

This paper explores the cognitive foundations of vampirism beliefs. The occurrence of beliefs of the dead rising from graves and returning to harm the living across many cultures indicates that this concept has features that make it successful in the process of cultural transmission. Comparing ghost- and vampire-like beliefs, it is argued that bodiless agents and animated but dead bodies represent two divergent cognitive attractors concerning concepts of dead humans. The inferential potential of the classic idea of a bodiless ghost is based on intuitions produced by the mental system of Theory of Mind, while the traditional concepts of a vampire attribute to the dead only minimal intentionality. The inferential potential of a vampire is based on the system of disease avoidance and the emotion of disgust related to the dead body. Vampirism beliefs represent a cognitively attractive combination of a hazard and relevant actions to eliminate it: they postulate a threat of an animated corpse and relevant behavioral reaction, namely fatal interventions on vampire’s body.

Cultural evolution is a powerful process shaping behavioural phenotypes of many species including our own. Killer whales are one of the species with relatively well-studied vocal culture. Pods have distinct dialects comprising a mix of unique and shared call types; calves adopt the call repertoire of their matriline through social learning. We review different aspects of killer whale acoustic communication to provide insights into the cultural transmission and gene-culture co-evolution processes that produce the extreme diversity of group and population repertoires. We argue that the cultural evolution of killer whale calls is not a random process driven by steady error accumulation alone: temporal change occurs at different speeds in different components of killer whale repertoires, and constraints in call structure and horizontal transmission often degrade the phylogenetic signal. We discuss the implications from bird song and human linguistic studies, and propose several hypotheses of killer whale dialect evolution.

In one conception of cultural evolution, the evolutionary success of cultural units that are transmitted from individual to individual is determined by forces of cultural selection. Here we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between several distinct phases of the transmission process in which cultural selection can operate. As a simple model we distinguish between a choose-to-receive phase, an encode-and-retrieve phase, and a choose-to-transmit phase. Proposed forces of cultural selection, such as various content biases, have typically been experimentally investigated only with respect to a single of these phases. Here we focus on emotional selection in cultural transmission of urban legends, which has previously been shown to operate in the choose-to-transmit phase. In a series of experiments we studied serial transmission of stories based on urban legends manipulated to be either high or low on disgusting content. One experiment used the classic serial reproduction methodology where only the encode-and-retrieve phase is involved. Another experiment instead involved choices of what material to read and what material to pass along. In both experiments, stories high on disgust were retained to a greater extent further down the chain. Thus, the prevalence of disgusting urban legends in America may be explained by emotional selection through a multitude of pathways.

‭As a European emigrant to (and now longtime resident of) Mexico City, contemporary artist Francis Alÿs is deeply sensitive to the ways that cultural systems shape and organize human lives. Over two decades, his work has become deftly efficient at instigating subtle social interferences that highlight and reconsider these organizing systems. Although much has been written about the social and political force of these interferences, the literature on Alÿs’s work has generally ignored the significant religious content and allusions recurring throughout his artistic practice. This essay is a critical meditation on the religious implications of his Fabiola project, a collection of more than 370 handmade copies of a lost nineteenth-century painting of a fourth-century Christian saint named Fabiola. By paying special attention to the ways that these “handmade readymades” ennoble the voices of others and revise the possible meanings of visual repetition (particularly in the context of mechanical mass-reproduction), this essay argues that Alÿs’s Fabiola is not only a profound study of cultural transmission but one that is particularly resonant with the Christianity that formed St. Fabiola’s own life and the forms by which she has been remembered.‬

Rituals are common in religion, sports, culture and specific life-stages (childhood, parenthood, etc.), raising the question of why being engaged in such activity, what could be its benefit, and how rigid they are. Here we analyzed 19 episodes of a Zulu Umsindo dance performed by 10 women. This ritual comprised a common act, performed in all dance episodes of all women, personal acts performed consistently by one woman but not by the others, and sporadic acts that varied both among and within women. There were significantly more sporadic than personal acts, and more personal than common acts, with only one common act that was performed in all 19 dance episodes. Personal and sporadic acts comprised about 90% of the dance repertoire, attesting a high flexibility in performance. Despite this high flexibility, the dance attained a seemingly rigid form due to three properties: (i) fixed temporal order that was preserved in all the dance episodes; (ii) a common act that was consistently performed by all women; and (iii) a high rate of repetition of the common act. These properties rendered the ritual its rigid form, along with enabling the dancers to display great flexibility in act repertoire. This analysis sheds new light on the content and structure of collective rituals, implicating on the understanding of how social transmission may occur, and giving potential evidence for the Sperberian view on cultural transmission. Finally, the Zulu dance seems to possess a communicative value in group solidarity without a direct involvement of precautionary systems.

In many cultures people value the importance of honour and related rules and behaviours. Honour can be seen as concepts and cultural items represented and processed according to evolved cognitive capacities and emotions supported by local social institutional arrangements. Indeed, this article holds that one reasonable way to analyze honour is to model how cognitive processes and transmission biases work in tandem with institutional support and environmental cues to exert selective pressures on the cultural distribution and formation of honour. The scope of this article is theoretical, aiming to address and explain culturally recurrent aspects of widespread honour concepts. What evolved cognitive systems and selection factors underpin the cultural transmission of honour concepts and institutions? It will be argued that the transmission of honour concepts draws upon cognitive systems referring to male formidability, management of reputation, coalitions, costly signals, shame and stigma, concern for protectiveness and parental investments, essentialist understanding and disgust and on the cognition of institutions.

To investigate possible cognitive factors influencing the cross-cultural incidence of spirit possession concepts and to develop a more refined understanding of the precise contours of 'intuitive mind-body dualism' (Bloom, 2004), two studies were conducted that explored adults' intuitions about the relationship between minds and bodies. Specifically, the studies explored how participants reason about the effects of a hypothetical mind-migration across a range of behaviours. Both studies used hypothetical mind-transfer scenarios in which the mind of one person ("Beth") is transferred into the body of another person ("Ann"). Participants were asked to reason about the new post-transfer person's behaviours and aptitudes. In Study 1, participants (n=25) were provided with a scale on which they indicated their answers; in Study 2, participants (n=26) responded to open-ended questions. In both studies, the majority of participants reasoned that while the post-transfer person's performance on physical tasks (e.g., sprinting) would be similar to the host (i.e., Ann) performance on mental tasks (e.g., story-telling) would be similar to the person whose mind has been transferred (i.e., Beth). Further, participants tended to assume a complete displacement of minds, such that the post-transfer person's performance on mental task items was reasoned to be identical to incoming person's performance normally. The relevance of these findings for explaining the variable incidence and spread of different possession concepts is discussed.

In a recent article, Barrett (2008) argued that a collection of five representational content features can explain both why people believe in God and why people do not believe in Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse. In this model ‐ and within the cognitive science of religion as a whole ‐ it is argued that representational content biases are central to belief. In the present paper, we challenge the notion that representational content biases can explain the epidemiology of belief. Instead, we propose that representational content biases might explain why some concepts become widespread, but that context biases in cultural transmission are necessary to explain why people come to believe in some counterintuitive agents rather than others. Many supernatural agents, including those worshipped by other cultural groups, meet Barrett’s criteria. Nevertheless, people do not come to believe in the gods of their neighbors. This raises a new challenge for the cognitive science of religion: the Zeus Problem. Zeus contains all of the features of successful gods, and was once a target for widespread belief, worship, and commitment. But Zeus is no longer a target for widespread belief and commitment, despite having the requisite content to fulfill Barrett’s criteria. We analyze Santa Claus, God, and Zeus with both content and context biases, finding that context ‐ not content ‐ explains belief. We argue that a successful cognitive science of religious belief needs to move beyond simplistic notions of cultural evolution that only include representational content biases.

Abstract Research on the cognitive foundations of cultural transmission has recently demonstrated that concepts which minimally violate one domain-specific ontological category expectation, or "minimally counterintuitive" concepts (MCI), are better recalled, all else being equal, than "intuitive" concepts (INT), which do not violate domain-specific ontological expectations. In addition, memory for MCI concepts is better than memory for "maximally counterintuitive concepts" (MXCI), or concepts which violate more than one domain-specifi c ontological expectation. Thus, MCI items appear to enjoy a memory advantage, although these effects are heavily affected by context. The present experiment was designed to investigate the influence of integration on the MCI effect. Participants memorized a series of stories that were either intuitive (INT), minimally counterintuitive (MCI), or maximally counterintuitive (MXCI). In addition, the stories were either causally integrated or not. Cued recall results suggested that integration of a story is a significant factor influencing memory performance. We argue that these results are complimentary to the MCI hypothesis.

This article discusses the notions of a good death associated with Hindu pilgrimages in the Nepalese and Tibetan Himalayas. Using theories and concepts from the cognitive anthropology of religion and from the cognitive science of religion—particularly the cultural epidemiological method—my objective is to explain why certain systems of thought and behaviour are favoured over others in cultural transmission. My thesis is that the apprehension of contagion and/or contamination, combined with prevailing cultural representations, exerts selective pressure on the formation of beliefs about good death. Pilgrimage sites are associated with intuitions about contagious and contaminating contact, avert the pollution of death, and provide links to supernatural agents.

There is growing interest in approaching research on language contact and change through an epidemiological, population-based model which takes 'linguistic items' or equivalent as a key unit of analysis. This paper explores a number of elements of such a model, with particular attention to a set of biases which may act as conduits or filters for the transmission of linguistic items in populations. These include a number of such biases introduced in recent models of cultural transmission: a threshold bias, a sociometric bias, a model bias, a conformity bias, and a frequency bias. A further bias is of particular relevance to language, but is argued to be equally important for models of cultural transmission in general. This is a context bias, which takes into account the kind of structural context which a given item or variant presupposes for its function. The presence or absence of a relevant structural context will determine the likelihood that the item will be transmitted, and if so to what degree of faithfulness. These biases may help toward characterising an anatomy of cultural epidemiology which makes explicit the relation between individual cognition, social processes, and population-level structure.

In addition to god beliefs, belief in life after death or in a nostalgic era when everything was perfect is a widespread phenomenon in world religions. In this paper, my aim is to explain how and why paradise beliefs have emerged and why they have survived over generations. Using recent theories and results from the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion as well as from studies of environmental preferences, I suggest that the answer lies in pan-human unconscious motivations, the architecture of mind, and the way human mind processes information.

Boyer's theory of counterintuitive cultural concept transmission claims that concepts that ideas that violate naturally occurring intuitive knowledge structures enough to be attention-demanding but not so much to undermine conceptual coherence have a transmission advantage over other concepts (Boyer et al. 2001: 535-64). Because of the prominence of these counterintuitive concepts in religious belief systems, Boyer's theory features prominently in many cognitive treatments of religion. Difficulties in identifying what are and are not counterintuitive concepts in this technical sense, however, has made empirical treatment of Boyer's theory irregular and difficult to evaluate. Further, inability to quantify just how counterintuitive a given concept is has made ambiguous specifying where the alleged cognitive optimum lies. The present project attempts to clarify Boyer's theory and presents a formal system for coding and quantifying the "counterintuitiveness" of a concept, and hence, facilitates empirical scrutiny of the theory.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Herodotus in Antiquity and Beyond examines the reception and cultural transmission of Herodotus' Histories, one of the most controversial and influential texts to have survived from Classical Antiquity, from ancient up to modern times.

Henrich and Boyd (2002) were the first to propose a formal model of the role of attraction in cultural evolution. They came to the surprising conclusion that, when both attraction and selection are at work, final outcomes are determined by selection alone. This result is based on a determistic view of cultural attraction, different from the probabilistic view introduced in Sperber (1996). We defend this probabilistic view, show how to model it, and argue that, when both attraction and selection are at work, both affect final outcomes.

(2006). Note: Have Black Rats Evolved a Culturally-Transmitted Technique of Pinecone Opening Independently in Cyprus and Israel? Israel Journal of Ecology & Evolution: Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 151-158.

Many psychologists and philosophers have suggested that religious ideas emerge because they are motivationally attractive. This paper attempts to support a version of the motivational thesis by relying on religious creeds as a source of historical evidence. This simple source of evidence indicates that the cultural evolution of religious ideas is partly a function of the motivational attractiveness of the religious ideas.

There is extensive evidence that adults, children, and some non-human species, represent routine events in the form of hierarchically structured 'action scripts,' and show superior recall and imitation of information at relatively high-levels of this hierarchy. Here we investigate the hypothesis that a 'hierarchical bias' operates in human cultural transmission, acting to impose a hierarchical structure onto descriptions of everyday events, and to increasingly describe those events in terms of higher hierarchical levels. Descriptions of three everyday events (going to a restaurant, getting up and going shopping) expressed entirely in terms of basic low-level actions were transmitted along ten chains each containing four adult human participants. It was found that the proportion of low-level information showed a significant linear decrease with transmission generation, while the proportions of medium- and high-level information showed significant linear increases, consistent with the operation of a hierarchical bias. The findings additionally provide support for script theory in general, and are discussed in relation to hierarchical imitation in non-human primates.

Paulo Sousa makes a strong case for applying the best anthropological models of cultural transmission (epidemiological models) to anthropology itself, to the ways in which anthropologists’ choices of topics and methods have changed. Sousa’s model of how kinship got gradually pushed away from its central position in anthropological inquiry is quite persuasive. Here I only propose a slight modiŽ cation of this general model, in the hope of making some of its predictions more speciŽ c. As Sousa points out, scientists’ general statements about their own Ž eld generally consist of interpretative statements that cannot be taken as a straightforward expression of what they actually do. Also, most scientists and academics are generally unaware of (or unconcerned with) the dynamics of authority transmission that organise their own Ž eld, that is, the set of criteria that people actually use when deciding that a given person is a member of a professional guild or community. Authority transmission is important because it has crucial consequences for how Ž elds evolve. ScientiŽ c or more generally academic and scholarly activity is a highly regulated social activity. Each speciŽ c community (generally co-extensive with what is called a “Ž eld”) has shared criteria for who is allowed to join and what counts as a valid contribution. In the same way as a guild, members of a “Ž eld” protect their common interest (the reputation of their activity) by restricting entry to those who fulŽ l certain conditions. In the case at hand, this means the set of criteria used to decide that this or that graduate students have become anthropologists. With a little idealisation, this amounts to: How does the community of

This paper reviews behavioural, neurological and cognitive correlates of innovation at the individual, population and species level, focusing on birds and primates. Innovation, new or modified learned behaviour not previously found in the population, is the first stage in many instances of cultural transmission and may play an important role in the lives of animals with generalist or opportunistic lifestyles. Within-species, innovation is associated with low neophobia, high neophilia, and with high social learning propensities. Indices of innovatory propensities can be calculated for taxonomic groups by counting the frequency of reports of innovation in published literature. These innovation rate data provide a useful comparative measure for studies of behavioural flexibility and cognition. Innovation rate is positively correlated with the relative size of association areas in the brain, namely the hyperstriatum ventrale and neostriatum in birds, and the neocortex and striatum in primates. Innovation rate is also positively correlated with the reported variety of tool use, as well as interspecific differences in learning. Current evidence thus suggests similar patterns of cognitive evolution in primates and birds.

Abstract Formal models of cultural evolution analyze how cognitive processes combine with social interaction to generate the distributions and dynamics of 'representations.' Recently, cognitive anthropologists have criticized such models. They make three points: mental representations are non-discrete, cultural transmission is highly inaccurate, and mental representations are not replicated, but rather are 'reconstructed' through an inferential process that is strongly affected by cognitive 'attractors.' They argue that it follows from these three claims that: 1) models that assume replication or replicators are inappropriate, 2) selective cultural learning cannot account for stable traditions, and 3) selective cultural learning cannot generate cumulative adaptation. Here we use three formal models to show that even if the premises of this critique are correct, the deductions that have been drawn from them are false. In the first model, we assume continuously varying representations under the influence of weak selective transmission and strong attractors. We show that if the attractors are sufficiently strong relative to selective forces, the continuous representation model reduces to the standard discrete-trait replicator model, and the weak selective component determines the final equilibrium of the system. In the second model, we assume inaccurate replication and discrete traits. We show that very low fidelity replication of representations at the individual level does not preclude accurate replication at the population level, and therefore, accurate individual-level replication of representations is not necessary for either cultural inertia or cumulative cultural adaptation. In the third model, we derive plausible conditions for cumulative adaptive evolution, assuming continuous cultural representations, incomplete transmission and substantial inferential transformations.

In this paper, the author incorporates his new conceptual scheme developed in an earlier book titled God as the Shadow of Man as a means of bridging between micro- and macro-criminology. The key concept is the mythogene, which is an ahistorical structure of longing and experience. He utilizes this concept to explain the recruiting process of the individual into crime. Then mythology, which is the sum total of all mythogenes in a given group, is utilized to understand the formation of criminal groups. Finally, the ethos, which is the conglomeration of mythologies, is utilized to explain, inter alia, the genesis of criminal societies such as the Third Reich of Germany. Conceptual clarification CRIMINAL AND DEVIANT behavior involve a relationship between certain forms of human behavior contrary to given social norms. Hence, criminal and deviant behavior are dualistic and associational. This relationship is the focal concern of criminologists and is not a unidimensional phenomenon as in psychology, which mostly studies the behavior of the human individual, or sociology, which focuses on human aggregates, or law, which deals in legal norms. Due to the perception that a relationship is the central subject of criminology, Walter Reckless studied the association between behavior and rules as early as 1961 (Reckless 1961). However, his ideas, grouped under the headline "Containment Theory," were largely ignored by the criminological establishment. Yet, in 1969 Travis Hirschi published his social bonding theory (Hirschi 1969), which is based largely on Reckless's theory and received almost universal acclaim from American criminologists. The gist of Hirschi's theory is that the lack of bonds of an individua l to other individuals, to his membership groups, or to restraining social norms, sometimes lead to delinquency. Hirschi, however, did not deal with the contents of the social bonds, nor with the individual's motivation to entertain them. This was carried out in the pioneering work of Claude Levi-Strauss, whose epoch-making studies in the Amazon River Basin of Brazil revealed that myths link nature and culture (Levi-Strauss 1964). Following in the giant footsteps of Strauss, I have demonstrated in a recent trilogy that myths may also serve as bonds between subject and object, human and non-human, and the individual and group (Shoham 2000a, 2000b, 2000c). Of course, one recognizes that much research and theory concerning these topics has occurred since the time of Reckless and Straus (See Agnew 1985; Cernkovich and Giordano 1987:299-300; Laub and Sampson 1988; Wells and Rankin 1988; Voorhis et al. 1988). However, having been a student of both Reckless and Levi-Strauss, I shall try presently to base myself on t he work of these two pioneers and provide a new framework for criminological theory. The first claim is that myths provide the motivational contents of the normative bonds of individuals to groups. However, I distinguish between "mythogenes," the motivational structures of experience and longings of individual human beings, and "myths," which are, according to Freud (1961:141-2), "the distorted vestiges of the wish-fulfillment fantasies of whole nations... the age-long dreams of young humanity." Freud actually raised his intrapsychic interpretation of dreams to the group level and claimed that the myth is an expression of the tribe's "social characters," the nation's or social aggregate's wishes and visions. Surely, the myth of the Flood was not dreamful wish fulfillment, but a projection of actual experiences with disastrous inundation by rivers, especially in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Myths are, therefore, also a projection of experiences and spectacular events borne by a group before written history. Hence, mythogenes are projected by individuals, whereas myths are projected by groups. Still, mythogenes are the building blocks of myths; mythology is the collective body of myths in a given social aggregate. …

Genomic imprinting may be implicated in the origin and maintenance of the cognitive architecture required for cultural transmission. Relatedness asymmetries are expected to lead to increases in the receptibility of matrilineally transmitted information. This may help explain why maternal genes contribute preferentially to the neocortex. That is, maternal genes could influence biases in the transmission and/or acquisition of information. This perspective is complementary to gene-culture coevolutionary approaches.

Abstract Every winter, (male) humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) produce long complex songs. Song content is dynamic and singers incorporate changes as they occur, thus song is shared through cultural transmission. We compared songs recorded in winter migratory termini in Tonga, New Caledonia, Eastern Australia, and on migration paths off Eastern Australia and New Zealand, in the winter of 1994. Seven themes were shared by all regions, with an additional two themes shared by all but Tonga. Differences in regional variants were most pronounced between Tongan and Eastern Australian song. New Caledonian and Kaikouran song were more similar to songs from Eastern Australia rather than Tonga. These regional differences were stable across the season. The results suggest some migratory exchange among widely separate wintering regions of Area V, consistent with tag recovery data, but the time and location at which song sharing occurs remains speculative.

This chapter clarifies some points regarding the idea of translatio studiorum . It develops the theme indicated in the title, claiming that translatio studiorum can also be seen in the changes in the philosophical terminology of medieval Greek-Latin translations. It illustrates some examples of the history and semantic variation of philosophical terms in the Greek-Latin translations, which are classified according to some typologies of cultural transmission. The first group of examples refers to translatio studiorum from Greek and pagan antiquity to the Latin and Christian Middle Ages: the first example is from Aristotle, the second from Stoic and Neoplatonic thought. They are of particular interest in that they are two Latin neologisms from the medieval period: subalternatio , subordination, and impassibilitas , impassiveness. Keywords:Aristotle; Greek-Latin translations; Neoplatonic; philosophical terminology; translatio studiorum; Christian middle ages

Writing is a relatively recent cultural invention that first appeared in the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium. The necessity for record keeping and the relative stability brought by urbanization allowed the preserving of written records and development of the writing system. A cultural invention such as writing can engender conceptual change at the level of orthography and its related linguistic and cognitive discrimination. The orthographic representations of linguistic categories became organizing. The role of writing in cultural transmission and its importance in understanding the nature of texts such as MUL.APIN is clarified by developing a model of writing and conceptual change. The analysis of MUL.APIN is based on the few assumptions like, Canonical MUL.APIN that reflects the content and linguistic forms of the cuneiform astronomical tradition and of cultural transmission. Writing is a form of communication and biases mental representation toward logical form.Keywords: conceptual change; Mesopotamia; MUL.APIN; orthography; Sumerian cuneiformwriting; writing system

tWater-of-Immortalityt refers to such divine water in various myths from different ethnic backgrounds. Water-of-Immortality myths prevailing in Altaic-speaking areas, Japan and the Korean Peninsula, share certain characteristics. This essay concentrates on the analysis of such myths in Mongolian, Kazakh and Japanese, using comparative approaches in folklore studies like typological comparison and motif interpretation. The Water-of-Immortality theme is based upon human fear of death and human longing for immortal life, reflected in people's belief in the Water-of-Immortality and related rituals in the old times. The motif of snake sloughing off its skin in Japanese Water-of-Immortality myths is connected with the skin-peeling motif in the origin of death myth in ancient Mesopotamia. As for the similar elements in Japanese and Mongolian beliefs in skin-peeling, there are two assumptions: one is that they are parallel cultural developments emerging simultaneously; the other is that this is a result of cultural transmission. Keywords: Altaic culture; Japanese culture; motif interpretation; origin of death myth; skin-peeling motif; Water-of-Immortality myths

This chapter focuses on the Christians of al-Ḥīra, who, according to all the sources known to us made up a significant portion of its total population and profoundly shaped its character. In the course of time, they and their monasteries became so prominent in the Arab imaginaire as to emerge as a literary topos . Being Arabs and adherents of Syriac Christianity at the same time, they maintained close contacts to their neighboring coreligionists and functioned as a cultural transmission belt between Persia, Byzantine Syria, and the Arab Peninsula. To highlight their importance within the society of al-Ḥīra, an analysis of the existing written sources will be undertaken, complemented by a brief review of the archeological material. The focus lies on the Christians' social position and on their role in the political and religious life of the region. Keywords: al-Ḥīra; Arab Christians; Late Antique Iraq; Syriac Christianity

This chapter presents a contrast to Helen Berger's prediction based on observation and data collected from ethnographic fieldwork done among the Pagan community in Minnesota's Twin Cities, otherwise known by members as tPaganistant. The focus on the transmission of values and culture from one generation to the next in contemporary Paganism is an issue that the author has been documenting carefully. The advising, mentoring, establishing of roles, and transmission of shared Pagan values and Pagan culture are actually part of a cyclical process of community building in Paganistan. Bergers description of the influence of children on contemporary Paganism evokes the image of a new growth in the garden that eventually takes over and chokes the rest of the greenery; homogeneity appears to be inevitable, and the community is preparing itself to be awash in a more mainstream expression. Keywords: contemporary Paganism; Helen Berger

Title: The Cultural Transmission of Artefacts, Skills and Knowledge: Eleven studies in technology education in France Author/Editor: Jacques Ginestie (Ed.) Publisher: Sense Publisher Price Paper back £25 Hard back £50 Reviewed by: Professor Stephanie Atkinson ISBN: 978-90-8790-426-5 978-90-8790-427-2 Orders: http://www.sensepublishers.com

This is the third year in which the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR) has organized sessions in association with the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). TWo of these sessions, those on cognition and causality, were continuations of discus sions begun at the SSSR meeting last year in St. Louis. The NAASR panels on Religion, Cognition, and Ideology were noted in the SSSR Newsletter (December 1995) as one of the "highlights" of that meeting. Two sections on "Cognitive approaches to religion", organized by E. Thomas Lawson (Western Michigan University), featured presentations of continuing research on the cognitive relationship between ritual and mem ory by Robert McCauley (Emory University), on the cognitive constraints on sacred texts by Brian Malley (University of Michigan), on religious syn cretism by Timothy Light (Western Michigan University) and on cultural transmission by Justin Barrett (Cornell University). Among other things, this session was noteworthy because of its interdisciplinary participation by a philosopher (McCauley), a linguist (Light), a psychologist (Barret) and an anthropologist (Malley). Malley's conclusion that he was simply trying to demonstrate that the production of religious culture shares the same cogni tive conditions and constraints as any cultural production effectively sum marizes the fundamental import of all four presentations in these exciting sessions.

This book will be of interest to all those who have engaged with hypertext either as creators or as users. They will discover that screen writing has a history going back to a number of avant-garde practices which already incorporated a screen imaginary into the creative work. Readers of this volume will be offered a privileged insight into a debate between detractors and advocates of the new modes of writing and reading and the new means of cultural transmission (CD-ROM, the Internet, digitisation); they will thus be able to weigh up for themselves the assets and illusions, the heuristic merits and politico-commercial issues at stake. May these reflections convert the globe-trotters of hyperspace into knowledgeable navigators!