Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Querbes A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4105626 | biostudies-literature | 2014
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Querbes Adrien A Vaesen Krist K Houkes Wybo W
PloS one 20140721 7
Formal models have linked prehistoric and historical instances of technological change (e.g., the Upper Paleolithic transition, cultural loss in Holocene Tasmania, scientific progress since the late nineteenth century) to demographic change. According to these models, cumulation of technological complexity is inhibited by decreasing--while favoured by increasing--population levels. Here we show that these findings are contingent on how complexity is defined: demography plays a much more limited ...[more]