Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the Palaeolithic / [edited by] Alex Mesoudi and Kenichi Aoki.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction to "Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the Palaeolithic" / Kenichi Aoki and Alex Mesoudi --
2. Factors limiting the number of independent cultural traits that can be maintained in a population / Laurel Fogarty, Joe Yuichiro Wakano, Marcus W. Feldman, and Kenichi Aoki --
3. The evolution of culturally transmitted teaching behavior / Wataru Nakahashi --
4. A population-genetics based model for explaining apparent cultural continuity from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic in Eurasia / Yutaka Kobayashi, Seiji Kadowaki, and Masaki Naganuma --
5. Mobility and cultural diversity in central-place foragers : implications for the emergence of modern human behavior / L.S. Premo --
6. Behavioral modernity and the cultural transmission of structured information : the semantic Axelrod model / Mark E. Madsen and Carl P. Lipo --
7. Inferring learning strategies from cultural frequency data / Anne Kandler and Adam Powell --
8. Simulating geographical variation in material culture : were early modern humans in Europe ethnically structured? / Mirna Kovacevic, Stephen Shennan, Marian Vanhaeren, Francesco d'Errico, and Mark G. Thomas --
9. Transmission of cultural variants in the North American Paleolithic / Michael J. O'Brien, Briggs Buchanan, Matthew T. Boulanger, Alex Mesoudi, Mark Collard, Metin I. Eren, R. Alexander Bentley, and R. Lee Lyman --
10. Experimental studies of cumulative culture in modern humans : what are the requirements of the ratchet? / Christine A. Caldwell --
11. Learning in the Acheulean : experimental insights using handaxe form as a 'model organism' / Stephen J. Lycett, Kerstin Schillinger, Marius Kempe, and Alex Mesoudi.

This volume is motivated by the desire to explain why Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans, in terms of cultural differences between the two (sub-)species. It provides up-to-date coverage on the theory of cultural evolution as is being used by anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, and psychologists to decipher hominin cultural change and diversity during the Palaeolithic. The contributing authors are directly involved in this effort, and the material presented includes novel approaches and findings. Chapters explain how learning strategies in combination with social and demographic factors (e.g., population size and mobility patterns) predict cultural evolution in a world without the printing press, television, or the Internet. Also addressed is the inverse problem of how learning strategies may be inferred from actual trajectories of cultural change, for example as seen in the North American Palaeolithic. Mathematics and statistics, a sometimes necessary part of theory, are explained in elementary terms where they appear, with details relegated to appendices. Full citations of the relevant literature will help the reader to further pursue any topic of interest.