Events Detail

Speaker:
Marco Smolla

Co-Evolution of Social Structure and Culture

Cultural evolution relies on the transmission of beliefs, knowledge, skills and other cultural traits among individuals. Research indicates that the structure of social networks plays a pivotal role in shaping the spread of information, ultimately influencing the capacity for cumulative culture. But what exactly is the role of social networks in shaping culture, and how do these networks emerge in the first place? In this talk, I will first take a top-down approach and test our expectations for cultural dynamics on networks. In the second part, I present a bottom-up approach where we let network structure organically emerge as a result of cultural evolution. This talk aims to highlight the importance of both approaches to expand our understanding of cultural evolution in structured populations. 

 

Marco Smolla is a theoretical biologist studying cultural evolution in networked populations at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.