Alex Mesoudi: University of British Columbia W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied EthicsA Darwinian theory of cultural evolution holds that the same fundamental principles that govern biological change – variation, selection and inheritance – also underlie human cultural change. In fact, the empirical case for cultural evolution is now as strong as the case that […]
Pascal Boyer: Washington University Department of PsychologyRitualized behavior is found in children's typical development, as well as in the pathology of OCD and in cultural ceremonies. Pierrre Lienard and I proposed elsewhere a neurocognitive model of ritualized behavior in human development and pathology, as based on the activation of a specific hazard-precaution system specialized in […]
Karl Sigmund: University of Vienna Department of MathematicsA considerable body of theoretical and empirical evidence underlines the important role of punishment in stabilising high contributions to joint enterprises. But how does punishing behaviour emerge? This talk highlights the role of voluntary participation. Analytical methods and individual-based simulations show that social norms including the punishment of […]
Susan Carey: Harvard Department of PsychologyI make two non-controversial assumptions about human conceptual understanding. First, it is built from a shared set of developmental primitives--the representational resources bequeathed to all human beings by evolution. Equally obviously, human cultures create new representational resources, transcending these initial ones in format, content and expressive power, which are turn […]
Bernard Comrie: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Department of Linguistics & UC Santa Barbara Department of LinguisticsAn understanding of the transmission of language across time requires reference to both vertical transmission - for instance, the English word "father" is a direct inheritance from the ancestral language Proto-Indo-European - and horizontal transmission - "paternal" was […]
Brenda Bowser: Cal State Fullerton Department of AnthropologyThis paper examines the transmission of stylistic behavior in the community of Conambo. The people of Conambo are self-sufficient horticultural foragers who are strongly divided into two competing coalitions with flexible membership and defections across the coalitional boundary. The women of Conambo maintain a domestic polychrome ceramic tradition […]
Daniel J. Kruger: University of Michigan School of Public HealthSex differences in human mortality rates stem from genetic, physiological, behavioral, and social causes that are best understood when integrated in an evolutionary life history framework. Males in many species are selected for riskier physiological and behavioral strategies that enhance reproductive success at the expense of […]
Paul Griffiths: University of Queensland Department of PhilosophyMany evolutionary processes have been described in which a trait that initially develops in the members of a population as a result of some interaction with the environment comes to develop without that interaction in their descendants. Waddington’s genetic assimilation is importantly different from the rest of this […]
Hillard Kaplan: University of New Mexico Department of AnthropologyThis paper will present an overview of age-specific mortality rates among hunter-gatherers and forager-horticulturalists. It will also present new data on resource transfers and physical rates of aging among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists in Bolivia. It will be argued that the balance of costs and benefits of maintenance and […]
Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell: Stanford University Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck SurgeryThe structure of African elephant society is primarily matriarchal in nature, where dominant female elephants make decisions for the herd as a whole with regard to safety, movements, resource choices and affiliations. Culture is often influenced by local environmental and social pressures, as well as […]
