Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Kolodny O
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4679034 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20151123 49
Archaeological accounts of cultural change reveal a fundamental conflict: Some suggest that change is gradual, accelerating over time, whereas others indicate that it is punctuated, with long periods of stasis interspersed by sudden gains or losses of multiple traits. Existing models of cultural evolution, inspired by models of genetic evolution, lend support to the former and do not generate trajectories that include large-scale punctuated change. We propose a simple model that can give rise to ...[more]