cultural evolution
Memetic change process
Cultural evolution is the process by which human societies change over time through the transmission and modification of knowledge, beliefs, practices, and technologies—passed down through learning rather than genes.
Like biological evolution, it involves variation, selection, and inheritance, but operates through imitation, teaching, and social institutions rather than DNA: The cultural evolution of language shows how words gain and lose meanings across generations.
The concept helps explain how humans developed complex societies so rapidly compared to genetic timescales.
- social learningAcquiring behavior through observation
- imitationCopy of the original
- passing downGiving to successors
- adaptationFitting to new conditions
- sociobiologyStudy of inherited social behaviors
anthropology · collective memory · shared beliefs · globalization · colonialism · transmission · ethnography · adaptive strategies · phylogenetics · social stratification · cognitive science · social norms · folk traditions · progress · migration patterns · behavioral economics · inheritance · language
- culturemusic taste, beliefs, food preferences, custom, festivals
- humanitiesphilosophy, history, literature, philosophy class, novels
- Puerto RicoSan Juan, Puerto Rico, Carolina, Old San Juan, Arecibo
- anthropologyanthropology, fieldwork, ethnography, social anthropology, cultural anthropology
- memeticsmeme, replicator, cultural inheritance, internet meme
- social evolutionsocial progress, social development, Morgan, savagery, barbarism
cultural evolutiongenetic inheritance
Transmission of biological traits
biological inheritance · biological evolution · natural selection · Darwinian evolution · instinct
cultural evolutioncultural decay
Deterioration of shared values
societal collapse · degeneration · primitivism · barbarism · tradition