ABSTRACT
Culture is the central concept of anthropology. Its centrality comes from the fact that all branches of the discipline use it, that it is in a way a shorthand for what makes humans unique, and therefore defines anthropology as a separate discipline. In recent years the major contributions to an evolution-
ary approach to culture have come either from primatologists mapping the range of behaviors, among chimpanzees in particular, that can be referred to as cultural or “protocultural”1,2
or from evolutionary theorists who have developed models to account for the pattern and process of human cultural diversification and its impact on human adaptation.3-5
Theoretically and empirically, paleoanthropology hasplayed a less prominent role, but remains central to the problem of the evolution of culture. The gap between a species that includes Shakespeare and Darwin
among its members and one in which a particular type of hand-clasp plays a major social role has to be significant. However, that gap is an arbitrary one, filled by the extinction of hominin species other than Homo sapiens. Paleoanthropology has the potential to fill that gap, and thus provide more of a continuum between humans and other animals. Furthermore, it provides the context, and hence the selective environment, in which cultural capabilities evolved, and so may provide insights into the costs and benefits involved in evolving cultural adaptations.
