06.12.2022 - Andrea Migliano

My recent work has focused on the selective processes shaping cultural evolution in hunter-gatherer groups, including hunter-gatherers social structure, their multi-level sociality and egalitarian interactions amongst people of different ages and sex, from multiple camps of residence. By mapping the social dynamics of hunter-gatherers in the Philippines and Africa, as well as the processes of cultural transmission, recombination and differentiation we are starting to understand the coevolution of human culture and sociality. In this context there is a potential to test similarities and differences in the evolutionary processes shaping cumulative cultural evolution and language. In this talk I will present the work we are starting in Congo and preliminary results on how the sociality of hunter-gatherers shape cumulative cultural evolution.