Leakey Research Grant Michelle A. Kline, UCLA Final Research Report
Objectives The objective of the research project is to test predictions of the hypothesis that cumulative cultural evolution is integral to human adaptation, and that humans possess unique social learning capacities that have coevolved with culture. The research is theoretically important to cultural evolutionary theory because these data will constitute the most extensive existing data set on cultural transmission outside the laboratory. The pursuit matters for the study of human origins, because culture is a major source of human adaptability, and because interpreting the early hominin archaeological record accurately requires empirically verified theory about how cultural transmission creates patterns of cultural variation.
The project sought to achieve four aims: (1) test whether subtle teaching is important to social learning in a small-scale society; (2) measure within-group variation in knowledge relevant to adaptive skills; (3) test whether theorized learning biases generate adaptive behavior outside the laboratory; and (4) measure patterns of social interaction to infer the geometry of cultural information networks.
The work took place in villages on Yasawa Island, Fiji. Each village is about 100-