From the Archives: When transmitting information to one another, humans tend to make certain mistakes more than others. A cognitive anthropologist explains why that matters to cultural stability and change.
Such examples of people systematically transforming different pieces of information in non-random ways abound in daily life.
In one study, for instance, my colleagues and I asked participants to reproduce a sequence of taps on drum pads. We created different setups so the chains of participants faced different physical constraints to produce the same rhythm, using either large movements, small movements, or a mixture of both to tap on the pads. After six “generations,” or episodes of transmission, the rhythms produced by participants showed distinctive features depending on these constraints.
This shift in understanding takes cultural evolution into the realm of complexity science, or the study of complex systems. This approach incorporates work from various disciplines, including anthropology, biology, physics, and computer science.
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When humans are gone, what animals might evolve to have our smarts and skills?Joanna Thompson is a science journalist and runner based in New York. She holds a B.S. in Zoology and a B.A. in Creative Writing from North Carolina State University, as well as a Master's in Science Journalism from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. Find more of her work in Scientific American, The Daily Beast, Atlas Obscura or Audubon Magazine.
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