ABSTRACT
No other species remotely approaches the human capacity for the cultural evolution of novelty that is accumulative, adaptive, and open-ended (i.e., with no a priori limit on the size or scope of possibilities). This chapter synthesizes research from anthropology, psychology, archaeology, genetics, and agent-based models into a speculative yet coherent account of two fundamental cognitive transitions underlying human cultural evolution that is consistent with contemporary psychology. The ideas in this chapter grew out of a non-Darwinian framework for cultural evolution referred to as the Self-Other Reorganization (SOR), according to which culture evolves (as did early life) through communal exchange among self-organizing neural networks. SOR bridges psychological research on fundamental aspects of our human nature such as creativity and our proclivity to reflect on ideas from different perspectives, with the literature on evolutionary approaches to cultural evolution. The current chapter grounds the SOR theory of cultural evolution in terms of cognitive transitions as suggested by archaeological evidence.
