Collaborative Research: Multi-Ancestor Coalescent Theory For Cultural Evolution

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Preferences, fashions, and languages change through time. Where this culture comes from and where it is going is a perennial subject of scientific and philosophical debate and a continually fascinating topic of popular speculation. In the last half century, population geneticists have revealed much of the genetic history of the human species, yielding a story of our migration and relatedness that has revitalized anthropology, archeology, and ethnology. The story of culture sometimes fits the story of the genes, but sometimes contradicts it and always changes more quickly. This project takes central insights from population genetics, especially coalescent theory that explores lineages backwards in time to see how they converge or coalesce into common ancestors, and appropriates these insights to a study of culture. Through both mathematical theory and empirical data, this project aims to implement coalescence as a central tool by which to understand the history of culture. This will pave the way for solutions to persistent questions relating to the speed and timing of cultural change and divergence, the degree of contact between cultures, and even the mechanisms behind these changes. Tests of progress on these questions will be conducted on bird song (the best studied nonhuman example of culture) as well as human language. This work will be conducted by an academically and ethnically diverse team of scientists including specialists in evolutionary biology, anthropology, mathematics, and cultural change.