Key concepts superorganic, cultural transmission, evoked culture, transmitted culture, dual inheritance theory, gene-culture co-evolution, culturegens, memes and memetics, imitation

The study of culture is usually the preserve of social anthropologists, sociologists and cultural theorists who have developed sophisticated theories to describe and explain cultural phenomena. Recently, there has been much interest in an evolutionary approach to culture. In contrast to many earlier theories these evolutionary theories attempt to provide ultimate rather than proximate explanations of culture. One of the biggest ultimate questions about culture is why do we have culture at all? From this perspective, the phenomenon of culture is not something that ‘just happened’; there is good evidence that human culture needs a particular sort of brain in order to sustain it. Therefore, there is a distinct possibility that the emergence of culture conferred some advantage to our ancestors in terms of their inclusive fitness (see chapters 2and 7). In addition to ultimate questions, evolutionists have also asked proximate questions. What, for example, are the cognitive processes that are necessary to enable the transmission of culture, what psychological factors can lead to changes in cultural practices and what is the relationship between culture and genes? The following chapter addresses these and other questions in exploring the relationship between evolution and culture.