Population connectivity shapes the distribution and complexity of chimpanzee cumulative culture

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Editor’s summary

Chimpanzees, humans’ closest living relatives, display several examples of the cultural development of complex tools. Understanding how this behavior developed can provide insight into how our own, now extinct, ancestors may have similarly developed culture over time, leading to our highly cultural species. Gunasekaram et al. looked at decades of data on genetic connectivity and cultural similarity among chimp populations. They found that migration among different populations allowed for the development, and then the divergence, of complex tools over time (see the Perspective by Richerson and Boyd). Simple tools or foraging strategies showed no such relationship, suggesting that they emerged separately in each population. —Sacha Vignieri

Abstract

Although cumulative culture is a hallmark of hominin evolution, its origins can be traced back to our common ancestor with chimpanzees. Here, we investigated the evolutionary origins of chimpanzee cumulative culture and why it remained incipient. To trace cultural transmission among the four chimpanzee subspecies, we compared population networks based on genetic markers of recent migration and shared cultural traits. We show that limited levels of group connectivity favored the emergence of a few instances of cumulative culture in chimpanzees. As in humans, cultural complexification likely happened in steps, with transmission between populations, incremental changes, and repurposing of technologies. We propose that divergence in social patterns led to increased mobility between groups in the genus Homo, resulting in irreversible dependence on cultural exchange and complexification.

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References and Notes

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