article · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
This research examines how children learn in mobile hunter-gatherer societies, evaluating theoretical transmission modes alongside field evidence. It assesses five established transmission modes previously unexamined in hunter-gatherer studies, explores conformist and concerted group transmission, and proposes cumulative transmission as an additional group mode. The findings indicate that the cultural conservation effects of vertical transmission have historically been underestimated because earlier analyses overlooked remote generations and failed to distinguish between intrafamilial and extrafamilial learning. Field data reveal that roughly half of the horizontal and oblique social learning among children and adolescents involves individuals who are not genetically related. Close living arrangements facilitate multiple forms of group transmission, which theoretically support cultural conservation, homogeneity within cultures, and pronounced diversity between distinct cultures.
Understanding how knowledge is shared across generations in hunter-gatherer communities illuminates the evolutionary foundations of human social learning. Demonstrating that children rely extensively on both unrelated camp members and close family clarifies the social dynamics that sustain shared knowledge, protect cultural traditions, and drive cumulative cultural complexity across human history.
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We examine from whom children learn in mobile hunter-gatherers, a way of life that characterized much of human history. Recent studies on the modes of transmission in hunter-gatherers are reviewed before presenting an analysis of five modes of transmission described by Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman [L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, M. W. Feldman, Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach (1981)] but not previously evaluated in hunter-gatherer research. We also present two modes of group transmission, conformist transmission, and concerted transmission, seldom mentioned in hunter-gatherer social learning research, and propose a unique mode of group transmission called cumulative transmission. The analysis of the additional modes of transmission indicated that cultural evolutionary signatures of vertical transmission, such as the conservation of cultural traits, have been underestimated because previous studies have seldom considered remote generations or distinguished intrafamilial from extrafamilial horizontal and oblique transmission. However, field data also indicate that hunter-gatherer children interacted with and learned from many nongenetically related individuals; about half of children's and adolescents' horizontal and oblique social learning came from nongenetically related individuals. Intimate living conditions of hunter-gatherers provide opportunities for group transmission, and ethnographic evidence presented demonstrates that at least three types of group transmission exist. All three forms of group transmission theoretically contribute to the conservation of culture, homogeneity of intracultural diversity, and high intercultural diversity. Analysis of additional modes of oblique and horizontal transmission and discussion of previous and unique modes of group transmission demonstrate the various mechanisms by which hunter-gatherer children learn and how cultures are conserved and contribute to cumulative culture.
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DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2322883121
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