Think like an ecologist?: A response to ‘Changing models in cultural evolution: from (quasi-)Darwinian to ecological mechanisms: a commentary on “Quasi-Darwinian mechanisms: ecological inheritance and cumulative culture” by Kim Sterelny’ by Nicolas Baumard and Jean-Baptiste André

Abstract

Nicolas Baumard, Jean-Baptiste André and I agree that ecological legacies play a large role in explaining the capacity of Late Pleistocene and Holocene hunter-gatherers to adapt to the many environments in which they flourished. We also agree that while social learning is important, it rarely consists of members of the incoming generation passively copying the skills, values and beliefs of their parental generation. We disagree in that Baumard and André suggest that ecological models offer a complete account of the cumulative character of human culture, while also thinking that the active and discriminating aspects of social learning undermine selectionist accounts of cumulative culture. In contrast to their views, I continue to defend a hybrid model of intergenerational hunter-gatherer adaptation, with inherited ecological legacies playing an important role, but with cultural inheritance winnowed by selection-like mechanisms also playing an important role. In the commentary, I devote significant space to articulating the distinction between persisting legacies and inherited capacities and its theoretical importance. So while there is considerable convergence between the ideas of Sterelny and those of Baumard and André, important issues remain open.