The value of teaching increases with tool complexity in cumulative cultural evolution.
The value of teaching increases with tool complexity in cumulative cultural evolution.
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教学的价值随着文化累积进化中工具的复杂性而增加。
DOI：
10.1098/rspb.2020.1885
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发表时间：
2020
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Lucas AJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Lucas AJ
人类累积文化进化（CCE）被认为是一种强大的生态和进化力量，但其起源却知之甚少。长期以来认为CCE需要专门的社会学习过程，如教学，最近受到质疑，并不能解释为什么这样的过程首先演变。另一种假设是，这些过程随着对复杂工具的依赖越来越大而逐渐共同进化，但这一假设在很大程度上未经检验。为了解决这个问题，我们使用了大规模的传输链实验（624名参与者），以研究不同的学习过程在两种不同复杂性的工具类型中产生累积改进的作用。这两种工具类型的有效性在实验世代中都有所增加，但教学只为更复杂的工具提供了优势。此外，虽然简单的工具倾向于集中在一个共同的设计，更复杂的工具保持了设计的多样性。这些发现表明，累积文化的出现并不严格依赖于教学，但可能会产生选择，教学。随着对日益复杂的工具的依赖增加，教学的选择也会增加，从而促进了文化艺术品的日益开放式发展。
Human cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is recognized as a powerful ecological and evolutionary force, but its origins are poorly understood. The long-standing view that CCE requires specialized social learning processes such as teaching has recently come under question, and cannot explain why such processes evolved in the first place. An alternative, but largely untested, hypothesis is that these processes gradually coevolved with an increasing reliance on complex tools. To address this, we used large-scale transmission chain experiments (624 participants), to examine the role of different learning processes in generating cumulative improvements in two tool types of differing complexity. Both tool types increased in efficacy across experimental generations, but teaching only provided an advantage for the more complex tools. Moreover, while the simple tools tended to converge on a common design, the more complex tools maintained a diversity of designs. These findings indicate that the emergence of cumulative culture is not strictly dependent on, but may generate selection for, teaching. As reliance on increasingly complex tools grew, so too would selection for teaching, facilitating the increasingly open-ended evolution of cultural artefacts.