The Pleistocene and the Origins of Human Culture:
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Description: Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that the specific mechanism by which humans mastered the Pleistocene is our capacity to evolve adaptations to the variation of Plio-Pleistocene environments via cultural traditions.
The Pleistocene and the Origins of Human Culture: The Pleistocene and the Origins of Human Culture: Department of Environmental Science and Policy Los Angeles, California USA 90024 Abstract. A number of authors have advanced the argument that the onset Pleistocene climate fluctuation is responsible for the evolution of human anatomy and cognition. This hypothesis is in contrast to the common idea that humans represent a revolutionary breakthrough rather than a conventional adaptation to a particular ecological niche. The Pleistocene hypothesis is, as proposed, not wen specified. How did Pleistocene fluctuations specifically favor the particular adaptations that characterize humans? The revolutionary breakthrough hypothesis is similarly weak. Our large brain and all it can do does seem responsible for our present dominance of the earth. If so, what has prevented many animal lineages in the remote past from evolving large brains? Theoretical models of the cultural evolutionary process suggest some answers to these questions. Learning, including social learning, is rather generally a useful adaptation in variable environments. The progressive brain enlargement in many mammalian lineages during the last few million years suggests that climatic deterioration has had the general effect predicted by the Pleistocene hypothesis. Increased dependence on simple social learning was a preadaptation to the evolution of a capacity for complex traditions. The evolution of a costly capacity to acquire complex traditions is inhibited because, initially, complex traditions will be rare. Having the capacity to learn things that are far too complex to invent for oneself is not useful
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