From epic poetry to game shows, from Stone Age axes to spaceflight, humans have the most complex cultures of any species on Earth. Since the time of Darwin, scientists have suspected that this culture ...

Recent investigations into primate behaviour have underscored the importance of cultural evolution — the process by which behaviours and skills are socially transmitted and refined over successive ...

My last blog, and the one before it, explored how leaving a legacy, whether it be a biological legacy—by having children—or a cultural legacy—through ideas and actions—may impact one’s sense of ...

Each of us individually is the accumulated product of thousands of generations that have come before us in an unbroken line. Our culture and technology today are also the result of thousands of years ...

In a recent review published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, researchers discussed the role of climatic shifts and vegetation changes in driving the evolution within the subfamily ...

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift — driven not by genes, but by culture. In a paper published in the Oxford ...

A new study challenges the idea that language stems from a single evolutionary root. Instead, it proposes that our ability to communicate evolved through the interaction of biology and culture, and ...

Scientists have traced kissing back to early primates, suggesting it began long before humans evolved. Their analysis points to great apes and even Neanderthals sharing forms of kissing millions of ...

A new study argues that human culture — including religion, politics and war — influences how wildlife evolves in cities. In Los Angeles, factors such as policing, zoning, and local values and ...

This blog was co-authored by Lene Rachel Andersen and Joe Michalski. In her book, Metamodernity: Meaning and Hope in a Complex World, Lene Rachel Andersen traces the evolution of culture and human ...