From epic poetry to game shows, from Stone Age axes to spaceflight, humans have the most complex cultures of any species on Earth. Since the time of Darwin, scientists have suspected that this culture ...

In Part One of this series, we saw that culture doesn't suffer from the problem that Darwin's theory of natural selection successfully solved: the problem of how change accumulates in biological ...

Are cultural evolution rates similar across human societies? The emerging field of Cliodynamics uses mathematical models to study history. The complexity characteristics are polity population; extent ...

It’s widely accepted conventional wisdom that when it comes to creative works—TV shows, films, music, books—consumers crave an optimal balance between novelty and familiarity. What we choose to ...

Scientists at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and the University of Bordeaux in France report that human cultural know-how grew through a long, measured shift from casual ...

This post is in response to How Culture Makes Us Smarter By Steve Stewart-Williams Ph.D. Are we big-brained mammals who have out-evolved ourselves? 'The evidence for the hypothesis that cultural ...

Your smartphone probably matters more for your survival than your DNA. That’s the startling implication of new research suggesting humans are in the midst of a fundamental evolutionary shift, with ...

Knowing how cultural evolution happens also means we can harness it for the larger good, creating a more just and sustainable world, according to a new article. Evolution goes beyond the genetic code ...

Artificial intelligence can develop solutions that humans would be unlikely to discover on their own. But what happens when machines do more than solve individual problems and actually discover ...

Evolution has been a cornerstone of the biological sciences for the better part of a century. Rarely, however, has evolutionary science been considered valuable in understanding contemporary human ...