Cultural Transmission Studies: Tree and Network Models of Micro- and Macroevolution

November 15, 2012 - November 16, 2012
Applied Evolutionary Epistemology Lab, Universidade de Lisboa, American Anthropological Association

Hilton San Francisco
Golden Gate 3
San Francisco
United States

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In biology, phylogenetic tree models (based on shared morphological traits, genes, or proteins) remain the primary methodological tool to reconstruct evolutionary ancestral-descent relationships. Phylogenetic and phylogenomic methodologies are also applied to reconstruct linguistic and cultural descent relationships. Such reconstructions have now advanced up to the point that one can estimate divergence in time, and the rate at which such linguistic or cultural divergence occurred. Both biological as well as sociocultural phylogenetics now demonstrate that besides natural selection, drift and punctuated equilibria theory can explain many of life's and sociocultural divergences. And comparative analyses demonstrate that ancestral-descent relations of human populations significantly overlap with linguistic family trees and cultural diversification trees. Phylogenetics has also brought to light that horizontal evolution occurs abundantly in life's evolution, and scholars active in the field have therefore challenged classic tree of life iconography. Today, scholars active in Horizontal Gene Transfer studies are therefore introducing network phylogenies ("webs of life") that allow the depiction and modeling of reticulate evolution. In the sociocultural sciences, linguists, archeologists and anthropologists have criticized hominin and cultural bifurcating trees because they are unable to depict hominin hybridization and horizontal transmission and diffusion of sociocultural traits. And here too, network models are introduced that allow the formalization and depiction of linguistic and sociocultural interactions through time. In sum, biological and sociocultural sciences both make use of tree and network models to depict biological and sociocultural evolution. We will examine how cultural trees and networks are composed differently (which data are used to compose trees and networks), what they can and cannot model, how inferences are made, and how they enable theory formation on cultural evolution.

Organized by Nathalie Gontier and Emanuele Serrelli and Chaired by Larissa Mendoza Straffon

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