Collaborative Research: Multi-Ancestor Coalescent Theory For Cultural Evolution

合作研究：文化进化的多祖先合并理论

• 批准号: 1137888
• 负责人: David Lahti
• 金额: $ 13.94万
• 依托单位: CUNY Queens College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2015-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1137888&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Multi; Ancestor; Coalescent

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.

偏好、时尚和语言随着时间的推移而变化。 这种文化从何而来，将走向何方，是科学和哲学辩论的永恒主题，也是大众猜测的一个持续迷人的话题。 在过去的半个世纪，人口遗传学家揭示了人类物种的遗传历史，产生了一个关于我们迁移和相关性的故事，振兴了人类学，考古学和民族学。 文化的故事有时与基因的故事相吻合，但有时又与之相矛盾，而且总是变化得更快。 该项目从人口遗传学中获得了重要的见解，特别是结合理论，该理论探索了时间上的血统，以了解它们如何融合或结合成共同的祖先，并将这些见解用于文化研究。 通过数学理论和经验数据，该项目旨在将聚合作为理解文化历史的核心工具。这将为解决与文化变化和分歧的速度和时间、文化之间的接触程度，甚至这些变化背后的机制有关的长期问题铺平道路。 这些问题的进展测试将在鸟鸣（最好的研究非人类文化的例子）以及人类语言上进行。 这项工作将由一个学术和种族多样化的科学家团队进行，包括进化生物学，人类学，数学和文化变革方面的专家。