Cumulative Culture, Archaeology, and the Zone of Latent Solutions

This paper begins with an analysis of Tennie's account of hominin culture: the claims that cumulative culture depends on a distinctive form of social learning; that that form of social learning is absent in the great apes; that its archaeological signature in the hominin lineage is late; and, finally, that the forms of social learning available to apes and probably earlier hominins only accelerated their pathways to skills they could acquire for themselves. This synthesis is bold, and influential, and hence an appropriate target of critical reflection. But the further aim of the paper is to develop an alternative view of cumulative culture and its relation to our lineage. It accepts the view that copying is one aspect of cumulative culture. But the paper argues that cumulative culture depends as well on integrating information from a variety of social and nonsocial sources and through an array of sensory modalities. It is not mostly a matter of copying from models but is socially guided re-creation of the model's skill. On this alternative view of cumulative culture, first, copying plays a less central role, and, second, cultures become cumulative not just through the incremental improvement of existing capacities.