Cultural Macroevolution

= "Cultural macroevolution is the study of the cultural evolutionary process considered on multiple scales over long time spans." [1]

Article

* Article / Chapter: Prentiss, A.M., Laue, C.L. (2019). Cultural Macroevolution. In: Prentiss, A. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology. Springer, Cham. doi

URL =https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11117-5_6

Abstract

"Cultural macroevolution is the study of the cultural evolutionary process considered on multiple scales over long time spans. Theoretical concepts favored by cultural macroevolutionary scholars (hierarchical evolution, multi-scalar selection, punctuated equilibria, historical contingency, and constraints on evolutionary pathways) align well with the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) which includes these concerns but adds interest in plasticity, evolution of development (evo-devo), and ecological inheritance and niche construction. Thus, we argue that macroevolutionary archaeology is well positioned to benefit from and contribute to the EES. Toward that end this chapter outlines baseline assumptions and contributions of macroevolutionary archaeology and introduces concepts from the EES and advanced fitness landscape theory as essential theoretical tools for solving problems in the long-term record of human bio-cultural history and evolution."

The Database

Seshat

Peter Turchin:

"What has driven the remarkable rises in social scale and complexity since the end of the last Ice Age? What role do religion, warfare, technology and agriculture play in the evolution of states and empires? Our work on cultural macroevolution combines computational modelling with data in order to disentangle the drivers of change in human history.

Seshat is more than a repository of data. It is structured in such a way that we can test rival hypotheses about what drove the rise of complex states. In a series of articles focusing on agriculture (Currie et al. 2015), military technology (Turchin et al. 2021) and religion (Turchin et al. 2022a; Whitehouse et al. 2022), we have done just that, pitting theory against data to discern which factors have been most important in this process. In 2022 we published our most complete analysis yet of the evolutionary patterns revealed by the data collected in Seshat. “Disentangling the evolutionary drivers of social complexity: A comprehensive test of hypotheses” (Turchin et al. 2022b) appeared in Science Advances. It marshalled data on 17 potential drivers of sociopolitical complexity. Our conclusion? The best-supported model indicated a strong causal role for a combination of increasing agricultural productivity and the adoption of new military technologies – especially iron weapons and cavalry."

(https://peterturchin.com/research/current-research/cultural-macroevolution/)

More information

• Bettinger, R. L. (2009). Macroevolutionary theory and archaeology: Is there a big picture? In A. Prentiss, I. Kuijt, & J. C. Chatters (Eds.), Macroevolution in human prehistory: Evolutionary theory and processual archaeology (pp. 275–295). New York: Springer.