PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jean-Baptiste André
AU  - Nicolas Baumard
TI  - Cultural evolution by capital accumulation
AID  - 10.1101/707620
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 707620
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/07/18/707620.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/07/18/707620.full
AB  - This paper aims to understand the dynamics of cultural accumulation when cultural knowledge is costly to produce and costly to learn. We first show that the cost of social learning prevents any significant cultural accumulation, as individuals rapidly reach a maximum amount of knowledge that they can barely learn over the course of their lives, without being able to go any further. However, we then show that cultural knowledge can accumulate durably and even experience phases of acceleration if it improves individuals’ productivity. That is, if culture is a capital. In this case, cultural knowledge creates wealth that can then be invested into the production of further knowledge, generating a positive feedback loop allowing significant acumulation and acceleration. These results prompt us to change the way we see cultural evolution. Instead of an accumulation of uninteded random “mutations,” as in genetics, cultural evolution should rather be seen as an accumulation of assets that gradually improve productivity and allow individuals to learn, master and create an increasingly higher amount of further assets.