Social learning and innovation in contemporary hunter gatherers

187 Vishvajit Pandya Part IV Innovation and Cumulative Culture 17 Innovation, Processes of Social Learning, and Modes of Cultural Transmission Among the Chabu Adolescent Forager-Farmers

Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series

Evolutionary and Ethnographic Perspectives

Department of Anthropology, Harvard University

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

obaryos@fas.harvard.edu

The planned series of volumes will report the results of a major research project entitled

“Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans: Testing Evolutionary Models of ing”, offering new perspectives on the process of replacement and on interactions betweenNeanderthals and modern humans and hence on the origins of prehistoric modern cultures.The projected volumes will present the diverse achievements of research activities, originallydesigned to implement the project’s strategy, in the fi elds of archaeology, paleoanthropol-ogy, cultural anthropology, population biology, earth sciences, developmental psychology,biomechanics, and neuroscience Comprehensive research models will be used to integratethe discipline-specifi c research outcomes from those various perspectives The series, aimedmainly at providing a set of multidisciplinary perspectives united under the overarchingconcept of learning strategies, will include monographs and edited collections of papersfocusing on specifi c problems related to the goals of the project, employing a variety ofapproaches to the analysis of the newly acquired data sets

Learn-Editorial Board

Stanley H Ambrose (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Kenichi Aoki (MeijiUniversity), Emiliano Bruner (Centro National de Investigacion Sobre la Evolution Humana),Marcus W Feldman (Stanford University), Barry S Hewlett (Washinton State University),Tasuku Kimura (University of Tokyo), Steven L Kuhn (University of Arizona), YoshihiroNishiaki (University of Tokyo), Naomichi Ogihara (Keio University), Dietrich Stout (EmoryUniversity), Hiroki C Tanabe (Nagoya University), Hideaki Terashima (Kobe GakuinUniversity), Minoru Yoneda (University of Tokyo)

Hideaki Terashima • Barry S Hewlett

Editors

Social Learning and

Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers

Evolutionary and Ethnographic Perspectives

Faculty of Humanities and Sciences

Kobe Gakuin University

Kobe

Japan

Department of AnthropologyWashington State UniversityVancouver

WashingtonUSA

Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series

The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed

to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer Japan KK

H Terashima and N Kamei)

and San (photos by K Omura,

S Kubota, and K Imamura)

The RNMH Project and the Study of Social Learning in Modern

Marvelous developments in genetics in recent years have revealed that modern humans(Homo sapiens, hereafter referred to simply as “Sapiens”) originated in Africa around 200 ka(thousand years ago), then around 100 ka they began to spread out of Africa and into Eurasia.They arrived in central and western Europe by 45–47 ka and it was there they came intocontact with Neanderthals The Neanderthals were a highly advanced human species supposed

to have evolved fromHomo heidelbergensis (also supposed to be the ancestor of Sapiens).They thrived in Europe for about 300,000 years and adapted to the cold weather during theglacial epoch However, they appear to have disappeared by ca 40 ka, 5,000–7,000 years afterthe appearance of Sapiens on the continent There remains an intriguing mystery: why andhow did the Neanderthals go extinct and Sapiens survive? What determined the fates of thetwo advanced hominins? Many researchers have been studying this problem for decades andexchanging heated debates on the possible causes of the demise of Neanderthals, but nodecisive conclusion has yet been reached

When considering the characteristics of modern humans, we usually think of our advancedcognitive capacity—highly flexible and capable of symbolic thought and language Workingmemory and the executive function of the human brain have been garnering particularattention recently Thus, one of the simplest scenarios of the replacement might be that theSapiens out-competed Neanderthals due to the advantage of cognitive superiority, perhapsallowing greater breadth and efficiency in hunting in gathering or advantages in interspecies incombat, although there is no substantive evidence of violent confrontation or battle betweenthe two populations

In any case, the development of higher cognitive abilities has doubtlessly contributed to thesuccess of modern humans, but there seems to be little evidence to justify the assumption of asudden increase in our cognitive abilities and advances in brain function, including languageuse, at the time of the replacement Because the replacement in Europe seems to havehappened so rapidly, it is doubtful that these cognitive advances occurred at that time Fromthe standpoint of neurobiology and population genetics, it would be very difficult or impossi-ble for such significant differences in cognition to evolve in the span of just 5000–7000 yearsand permeate the entire Sapiens population Rather, the rapidity of the replacement suggests

ix

that the differences in Sapiens’ cognition evolved earlier, probably before they left Africa.

Higher cognitive capacity would had to have evolved prior to its expression in the

develop-ment of tangible innovations such as new lithic industries, efficient subsistence strategies, and

flexible and effective social organization

There have been many factors proposed so far by researchers regarding the differences

between the two populations, such as their physical, social, and other adaptive capacities in

addition to the cognitive abilities mentioned above Those factors include differences in

average body size and musculature, energy expenditure, birthrate and mortality, demographic

patterns, subsistence systems, child development patterns, material culture such as clothing

and stone tool technologies, behavioral adaptations to variable environmental conditions,

movement of game animals, and social structures All of those factors influenced the

compe-tition for survival to various degrees, but it is difficult to point out any one or combination of

these as the primary catalyst(s) for the replacement The RNMH project focuses instead on

differences in the two species’ capacities for learning, particularly social learning and

innova-tive learning, to address the replacement problem This approach is more parsimonious

because learning abilities account for many of the possible differences listed above

Knowl-edge about how to construct and use effective clothing and tools in various environments, for

example, results from the accumulation of technical and ecological know-how gathered over

multiple generations Learning and the social behavior that supports learning are the most

important factors in the foundation of the human capacity to developcultural adaptations for

survival in various types of environments and ecologies RNMH proposes a hypothesis called

the “learning hypothesis” that suggests there were innate differences in learning ability

between Neanderthals and Sapiens that might have divided the fates of the two populations

About 2.5 million years ago, a hominin group known asHomo habilis began to make stone

tools in Africa It was the beginning of lithic technology and the distinctive cultural

develop-ment of our human ancestors, and since then culture has become the keystone of human

adaptation not only in the area of technology but also in social and subsistence domains Once

cultural behavior was established as a basic human quality, the creation and transmission of

culture became humans’ preeminent trait

In our learning hypothesis, learning is sorted into two types: (1) individual learning, i.e.,

learning on one’s own through trial and error, drawing solely on one’s own ideas, and (2) social

learning, i.e learning from others through imitation, being taught, or another process The

Neanderthals had advanced lithic culture, but it was very conservative They continued to

reproduce the same types of stone tools for almost 200,000 years, which suggests they were

very good at social learning but did not have much ability to innovate On the other hand, the

Sapiens invented various lithic industries after arriving in Europe, which could be a product of

their aptitude for innovative individual learning The Neanderthals’ learning behavior,

characterized by concentration on social learning but not on innovation, seems to have been

adaptive to places where environmental conditions were rather stable from generation to

generation The key difference may have been the flexibility of learning strategies in Sapiens,

allowing them to switch between and effectively combine individual and social learning in

quickly changing environments The final phase of the glacial epoch when the replacement

occurred was characterized by a climate that fluctuated widely and rapidly between cold and

warm, an environment that may have favored Sapiens’ learning strategies over that of

Neanderthals This flexibility would have enabled them to quickly solve adaptive problems

and thus to move swiftly and successfully into novel environments as they spread across the

globe

A wide range of research is needed to test the learning hypothesis In the RNMH project, six

research teams (A01, A02, B01, B02, C01 and C02) were organized under a steering

committee that gathered archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, social-cultural anthropologists,

developmental psychologists, geneticists, climatologists, paleoecologists, neuroscientists, and

others for collaborative interdisciplinary research Each team’s specific objects were asfollows:

A01: Archaeological research of the learning behaviors of the Neanderthals and early modernhumans

A02: Research on human learning behavior based on fieldwork among hunter–gatherersB01: Research on evolutionary models of human learning abilities

B02: Reconstructing the distribution of Neanderthals and modern humans in time and space inrelation to past climatic changes

C01: Reconstruction of fossil crania based on three-dimensional surface modeling techniquesC02: Functional mapping of learning activities in archaic and modern human brains

It is indispensable to clarify the learning patterns in ancient and modern hunting andgathering societies for the demonstration of the learning hypothesis A01 investigated archae-ological evidence, artifacts and traces of living sites indicative of past learning behaviors ofthe Middle and Upper Paleolithic humans Studies in experimental archaeology and ethno-archaeology were also conducted to interpret ancient traces of learning A02 investigatedcontemporary hunter–gatherers’ learning behavior, their social and individual learning,mainly through children’s everyday activities, to discern the characteristic learning behavior

of modern humans

The study of hunter–gatherers has been one of the main themes in anthropology since itsbirth in the nineteenth century, and this way of life is believed to be the closest approximation

in the contemporary world of ancient living conditions While it is not acceptable or accurate

to assert a one-to-one relationship between the lives of contemporary hunter–gatherers withthat of our human ancestors, it is also inappropriate to think that the research of hunting andgathering societies can shed no light on the reconstruction of ancient human conditions.Appropriate and deliberate collaboration between socio-cultural anthropology and archaeol-ogy, paleoanthropology, and other related fields could help reconstruct the behaviors ofancient humans

Team B01 conducted a theoretical study of the learning hypothesis by describing andanalyzing mathematical evolutionary models They simulated and compared various learningstrategies to find out what conditions might have led to the expansion of social learners orindividual learners in specific societies Team B02 reconstructed the distribution of theNeanderthals and the Sapiens in time and space during 20–200 ka and also reconstructedthe environments of those populations, including climatic conditions and ecological settings,

in order to make comparisons of the differences in adaptation of each population to eachenvironment

The learning hypothesis does not necessarily postulate a large and sudden cognitive jump;however, there are apparent morphological differences between the crania of Neanderthalsand Sapiens Therefore, it is crucially important to understand the relationship between brainmorphology and its functions Team C01 tried to reconstruct the fossil crania and brains ofNeanderthals and ancient modern humans, and C02 utilized fMRI in an attempt to identify thebrain sites supposed to relate to various learning activities

Learning behavior has essential importance for human culture and evolution There is,however, a huge difference between the learning done in formal school settings in modernizedsocieties and that in hunting and gathering societies in the past as well as present Our study ofsocial learning has been conducted mainly among contemporary hunter–gatherers in variousnatural and social environments and has revealed characteristics crucial to maintaining theirculture, livelihood, and joie de vivre Social-cultural anthropology has methodologicallyavoided the unilineal cultural evolutionary approach for decades because of the misuse ofDarwinian theory, but recent theoretical and methodological developments provide insightsinto social learning in humans as well as research problems of the RNMH project

In closing, we are grateful to all those who contributed to this book, the colleagues in the

RNMH project, and to those who kindly permitted us to live with them for fieldwork Financial

support for the project was provided by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,

Science, and Technology (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, Grant

No 22101001)

1 Social Learning and Innovation in Hunter-Gatherers 1Barry S Hewlett

Part I Evolutionary Approaches to Social Learning: Modes and Processes

4 A Multistage Learning Model for Cultural Transmission: Evidence from

Three Indigenous Societies 47Victoria Reyes-Garcı´a, Sandrine Gallois, and Kathryn Demps

5 To Share or Not to Share? Social Processes of Learning to Share Food

Among Hadza Hunter-Gatherer Children 61Alyssa N Crittenden

6 Learning to Spear Hunt Among Ethiopian Chabu Adolescent

Hunter-Gatherers 71Samuel Jilo Dira and Barry S Hewlett

7 Transmission of Body Decoration Among the Baka Hunter-Gatherers 83Yujie Peng

Part II Situated Learning and Participatory Approaches to Social Learning

8 Education and Learning During Social Situations Among the Central

Kalahari San 97Akira Takada

9 Constructing Social Learning in Interaction Among the Baka

Hunter-Gatherers 113Koji Sonoda

10 Social and Epistemological Dimensions of Learning Among Nayaka Gatherers 125Danny Naveh

Hunter-11 High Motivation and Low Gain: Food Procurement from Rainforest Foraging

by Baka Hunter-Gatherer Children 135Izumi Hagino and Taro Yamauchi

xiii

Part III Play, Social Learning, and Innovation

12 Play, Music, and Taboo in the Reproduction of an Egalitarian Society 147

Jerome Lewis

13 Children’s Play and the Integration of Social and Individual Learning:

A Cultural Niche Construction Perspective 159

Adam Howell Boyette

14 Evening Play: Acquainting Toddlers with Dangers and Fear at Yuendumu,

Northern Territory 171

Yasmine Musharbash

15 Hunting Play Among the San Children: Imitation, Learning, and Play 179

Kaoru Imamura

16 When Hunters Gather but Do Not Hunt, Playing with the State in the Forest:

Jarawa Children’s Changing World 187

Vishvajit Pandya

Part IV Innovation and Cumulative Culture

17 Innovation, Processes of Social Learning, and Modes of Cultural

Transmission Among the Chabu Adolescent Forager-Farmers of

Ethiopia 203

Bonnie L Hewlett

18 Variations in Shape, Local Classification, and the Establishment of a

Chaıˆne Ope´ratoire for Pot Making Among Female Potters in Southwestern

Ethiopia 217

Morie Kaneko

19 Innovation of Paintings and Its Transmission: Case Studies from

Aboriginal Art in Australia 229

Sachiko Kubota

Part V Cognitive and Social Development Approaches to Social Learning

20 Early Social Cognitive Development in Baka Infants: Joint Attention,

Behavior Control, Understanding of the Self Related to Others, Social

Approaching, and Language Learning 237

Tadashi Koyama

21 Learning in Collaborative Action: Through the Artworks of Baka Pygmy

Children 243

Eiko Yamagami

Part VI Social Learning and Other Approaches to Understanding the

Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans

22 Hunter-Gatherers and Learning in Nature 253

Hideaki Terashima

23 Sociocultural Cultivation of Positive Attitudes Toward Learning: Considering

Differences in Learning Ability Between Neanderthals and Modern Humans

from Examining Inuit Children’s Learning Process 267

Keiichi Omura

24 Body Growth and Life History of Modern Humans and Neanderthals fromthe Perspective of Human Evolution 285Taro Yamauchi

25 Evolutionary Locus of the Neanderthal Between Chimpanzees and ModernHumans: A Working Memory, Theory of Mind, and Brain Developmental,Piagetian Perspective 293Juko Ando

26 Reflections on Hunter-Gatherer Social Learning and Innovation 311Hideaki Terashima

Juko Ando Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Letters, Keio sity, Tokyo, Japan

Univer-Richard E.W Berl Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado StateUniversity, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Adam Howell Boyette Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC,USA

Alyssa N Crittenden Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada Las Vegas,Las Vegas, NV, USA

Kathryn Demps Department of Anthropology, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USASamuel Jilo Dira Department of Anthropology, West Florida University, Pensacola, FL,USA

Sandrine Gallois Institut de Cie`ncia i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Auto`noma deBarcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France

Melissa J Garfield Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Vancouver,

Keiichi Omura Studies in Language and Culture, Graduate School of Language and Culture,Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

Vishvajit Pandya Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication ogy, Gujarat, India

Technol-Yujie Peng Graduate School of Asian and African Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

xvii

Victoria Reyes-Garcı´a Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA),

Universitat Auto`noma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Institut de Ciencia i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Auto`noma de Barcelona, Barcelona,

Spain

Casey J Roulette Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA,

USA

Koji Sonoda Graduate School of Asia and African Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Akira Takada Graduate School of Asian and African Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto,

Japan

Hideaki Terashima Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, Kobe Gakuin University, Kobe,

Japan

Eiko Yamagami Department of Human Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Sciences,

Kobe Gakuin University, Kobe, Japan

Taro Yamauchi Laboratory of Human Ecology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido

University, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan

Social Learning and Innovation in

Keywords

Hunter-gatherersSocial learningInnovation

Little is known about hunter-gatherer social learning Many

more books and journal articles exist on great ape social

learning than exist on hunter-gatherer social learning

Social-cultural anthropologists have been interested in the

transmission and acquisition of culture for decades (Mead

1928; Malinowski 1928; Spindler 1974), but most of the

classic systematic child-focused studies of social learning

have been conducted with subsistence level farming societies

(Mead1930; Whiting and Whiting1975; LeVine et al.1994;

Rogoff 1981; Lancy 1996) Some hunter-gatherer

researchers include limited descriptions of children’s social

learning as part of their general ethnographies (see citations

surveyed in Chap 2 by Garfield et al.), but few

hunter-gatherer researchers have conducted systematic

child-focused studies on this topic (see Briggs1971; Bock2002

for exceptions)

This collection is the first edited volume to focus on

social learning in hunter-gatherers Authors were invited to

contribute if they had conducted child-focused ethnographic

field research on hunter-gatherer social learning, particularly

research on from whom or how children learn from others

We were open to any theoretical or methodologicalapproaches to the study of social learning We wanted to

be open to diverse approaches because not many researcherswork with hunter-gatherer children, and little is known aboutsocial learning in these groups Most of the Japanese andsome other authors received funding to conduct sociallearning research from a multidisciplinary project that tried

to understand how modern humans replaced Neanderthals.The project is described in the preface, was called thereplacement of Neanderthals by modern humans (RNMH),and was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research

on Innovative Areas from the Japanese Ministry of tion, Science, Culture, and Technology The project sought

Educa-to examine the “learning hypothesis” which assumed that thereplacement of Neanderthals by modern humans was due toinnate differences in learning ability One component of theproject aimed to understand social learning in contemporaryhunting and gathering groups The project supported impor-tant field-based research on social learning, but only the lastsection of this book directly addresses the Neanderthalquestion

1.1.1 Why Hunter-Gatherers?

Several reasons exist for focusing on hunter-gatherers First,

as mentioned above, the vast majority of previous research

on social learning in small-scale (sometimes called

B.S Hewlett ( * )

Department of Anthropology, Washington State University,

Vancouver, WA, USA

e-mail: hewlett@wsu.edu

# Springer Japan 2016

H Terashima, B.S Hewlett (eds.), Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers,

Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series, DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-55997-9_1

1

“traditional” or “preindustrial”) cultures has been conducted

in subsistence farming communities Research in these

cultures has provided important insights into how children

learn outside of formal school settings (e.g., Rogoff2003),

but several features of farming life, such as political, age,

and gender hierarchy, are substantially different from mobile

hunter-gatherer (the term forager is also used in this chapter

to refer to mobile hunter-gatherers) communities Second,

many systematic studies of social learning have been

conducted with children in laboratory settings in nation

states with complex levels of hierarchy, inequality, formal

education, and capitalism As Henrich et al (2010) suggest,

settings in WEIRD (Western, educated, industrial, rich,

democratic) cultures may dramatically bias results

Hunter-gatherers are generally as egalitarian as human societies get

and provide an opportunity to understand multiple ways in

which children learn their culture Finally, it seems

reason-able to consider social learning in contexts that characterized

most of human history Global capitalism has been around

for about 200 years, class stratification (chiefdoms and

states) about 5000 years, simple farming and pastoralism

about 10,000 years, and hunting and gathering at least

hundreds of thousands of years (about 95 % or more of

human history) Foragers today are not Paleolithic remnants

nor do they live in a world isolated from global economic

forces But the few remaining hunter-gatherers in the world

may provide insights into biases present in research in other

modes of production and how social learning that

characterized most of human history contributed to

pro-nounced cultural diversity and adaptations to natural

environments around the world long before the existence

of subsistence farming or formal education systems

1.1.2 What Is Social Learning?

Social learning is basically acquiring skills or knowledge

from others rather than learning them on your own Heyes

(1994) defines it as “learning that is influenced by

observa-tion, or interaction with, another animal (typically

conspe-cific) or its products.” Researchers from several disciplines,

such as evolutionary biology, child development,

social-cultural anthropology, economics, neurobiology, and

archae-ology, are interested in and have conducted research on social

learning Some researchers indicate than an “explosion of

interest” is occurring on the topic (Galef and Giraldeau2001;

Hoppitt and Laland2013; Whiten et al.2012) Aristotle in the

fourth century BC may have been the first person to

docu-ment that animals acquire behavior through imitation, and

Darwin was one of the first to suggest that apes imitated each

other and that imitation was the bridge between animal

instincts and human rationality (Hoppitt and Laland2013)

The history of social learning in evolutionary biology,

developmental psychology, and cognitive science focused

on identifying various forms and features of imitation Theability to imitate in humans is linked to the acquisition ofculture, and these studies eventually led to debates as towhether or not other animals had “culture.”

The debate about animal “culture” started with Imanishi’s(1952) research with a particular Japanese macaqueidentified by research assistant Satsuwe Mito that began toclean dirt from sweet potatoes in a stream Over severalyears many other members of the macaque troop picked upthe practice, and researchers referred to the behavior asprecultural imitation (Kawai1965) This led primatologists

to examine the transmission of traits in great apes A prehensive study of chimpanzee social learningdemonstrated that they have 42 traits that are socially trans-mitted and vary by region in Africa (Whiten et al 1999).Social learning is central to understanding the nature ofculture Definitions of culture in both anthropology andevolutionary biology include “transmitted,” “acquired,” or

com-“learned.” The definition of culture used here is anything(information, skills, knowledge, behavior, etc.) sociallytransmitted, acquired, and shared by a group The definitionemphasizes that it is non-genetically acquired from others(adults, children, friends, teachers) and shared with a groupover time Many evolutionists prefer “information” in theirdefinitions (Richerson and Boyd2005), but several culturalanthropologists have issues with this because it impliesculture is in our minds, when it also exists in our bodies(i.e., it is embodied in our muscles, neural network, andother biological systems, Downey 2010) and landscapes(Ingold2001)

Human social learning can just as easily be called culturallearning and the terms are considered synonymous in thisvolume Human social learning is relatively distinct fromsocial learning in other nonhuman animals Social learning

in nonhuman animals is generally limited to a few traits,often linked to finding food or mates By contrast, humansocial learning involves acquiring thousands of traitsassociated with cultural norms as well as kinship, political,economic, medical, and religious systems i.e., they have tolearn the culture in which they live Learning all these traitsfrom others is an efficient way to acquire culture There is noway one could learn everything they needed to know tosurvive in a culture by trial and error The cost to learnfrom others is much lower than it is to try and learn every-thing by discovery and trial and error

Social learning has limitations Rogers (1998) and othershave shown that social learning has costs because sometimesindividuals copy the errors of others and these errors canaccumulate It is important to maintain some individuallearning (i.e., trial and error) In environments that are verystable over time (e.g., reoccurring problems, climate,predators persist over thousands of generations), humans

and other animals adapt genetically to the environment On

the other hand, when environmental changes occur each

generation, it is adaptive for individuals to learn by trial

and error Mathematical models indicate that social learning

is particularly adaptive at an intermediate level of

environ-mental variability (i.e., tens or hundreds of generations)

(Henrich and McElreath2003) Richerson and Boyd (2005)

hypothesize that human culture, as we know it today,

emerged about 50,000 years ago during Pleistocene periods

of increased climatic variability Clearly, social learning has

enhanced human’s ability to adapt relatively easily and

rapidly to all types of climatic and environmental conditions

around the world

1.1.3 Why Children?

Social learning occurs throughout the life course of

hunter-gatherers Gurven et al (2006) found that it takes 20 years

beyond adolescence for male Tsimane foragers of South

America to learn how to be proficient hunters, and several

chapters in this volume demonstrate that most technological

and knowledge innovations come from young and

middle-aged adults, not children While both adults and children

learn from others, this volume focuses on children because

this is when learning it is most intensive and the authors of

chapters in this book conducted field research on social

learning with children

We encouraged authors to identify ages or stages of

childhood when they described social learning in a culture

Ethnographers in the past described the lives of “children” or

“youth” or “juveniles,” but the age range is often not clear

Age often impacts what a child can learn (e.g., from physical

strength to brain growth and cognitive abilities) and

influences interactions with others (see Bock2005a,band

Tucker and Young 2005 for examples of how age and

strength influence the acquisition of skills in hunter-gatherer

children) Some authors used age categories from

develop-mental psychology, while others preferred the stages and

ages of biological anthropologist Barry Bogin (1999)

Table 1.1 shows the stages and age ranges mentioned in

this volume

Some developmental psychologists believe infancy goes

up to 24 months, and Bogin’s infancy stage assumesweaning occurs at about age 2–3 years of age in mostsmall-scale societies Bogin (1999) indicates that infancyand juvenile stages occur with nonhuman primates andsocial carnivores but that the childhood and adolescencestages are relatively unique to humans

1.2.1 Foundational Schema

In order to grasp the nature of social learning among gatherers, it is necessary to understand their foundationalschema Three foundational schemas (ways of thinking thatinfluence many domains of forager life) pervade hunter-gatherer life: egalitarianism, autonomy, and giving/sharing

hunter-An egalitarian way of thinking means others are respectedfor what they are, and it is not appropriate to draw attention

to oneself or judge others as better or worse than others.Egalitarianism has political, gender, and age dimensions.This is why foragers do not have strong chiefs, men andwomen have relatively equal access to resources importantfor survival, and elders are not accorded special status,respect, or deference Respect for an individual’s autonomy

is also a foundational schema One does not tell or coerceothers what to do, including children Men and women,young and old, do pretty much what they want If they donot want to hunt that day, they do not do it, and if an infantwants to play with a machete, she is allowed to do so Agiving or sharing way of thinking also permeates hunter-gatherer life and is why foragers are characterized asextremely cooperative Bird-David (1990) calls it the “giv-ing environment,” and Sterelny (2012) identifies three types

of cooperation among foragers: sharing food, childcare, andinformation Hunter-gatherer families often share most ofwhat they acquire on a given day, they share it with everyone

in camp, and they share every day Sharing of childcare isalso extensive; cooperative care, including fathers, is more

Table 1.1 Stages and ages of human development

Developmental psychology stages Bogin stages

Infancy Birth until

walking

Infancy Birth until

weaning Early

pronounced in foragers than in other modes of production

(Hewlett et al 2011) The multiple ways information is

shared with children is described in several chapters in this

volume

Sanctions exist for foundational schema Others will tease

and joke about an individual’s sexual, dancing, or singing

abilities if someone starts to think he or she is better than

others, draws attention to himself/herself, or does not share

(Crittenden, Chap.5) If a child does not share, others make

sounds, gestures, or comments Children often hear stories

about how people who do not share properly face sanctions

(e.g., illness, death, death of a child, person who did not

share was a sorcerer)

Other general features of forager life include an

immedi-ate return economic system, lack of food storage, plenty of

leisure time, flexibility in camp composition, high

residen-tial mobility (move camps several times a year), relatively

few material possessions, and relatively peaceful (Lee and

Daly 2004; Kelly 2013) Immediate return means that

individuals eat the food they hunted or collected that day

or over the next few days; they do not store food (Woodburn

1982) This means that foragers are present oriented Time

allocation studies show that foragers spend less time in

obtaining food and have more leisure time than individuals

in other modes of production Camp composition often

changes daily with someone moving in or someone moving

out People like to travel and visit relatives in different

camps, and conflicts between individuals or families

gener-ally mean one of the families changes camps

1.2.2 Physical and Social Setting: Demography

of Forager Social Learning

Forager social learning is at least partially influenced by the

demographic composition (size, compactness, sex-age

distri-bution) of forager camps Hunter-gatherers live in camps of

25–35 people, of which about half are under the age of 15 due

to high fertility and mortality (women average about five live

births in their lifetimes and about 40 % of them die before

age 15) (Hewlett1991b) This means children have a limited

number of same-sex peers and helps to understand why

foragers are characterized as (a) having multi-age play

groups after weaning and (b) having greater proximity to

adults than children in other modes of production

Population densities of foragers are generally low (a few

people per square mile), but the living densities are high

because houses are generally only a few meters apart from

each other, i.e., camps are very compact For instance, Aka

camps occupy an area of about 56m2, the size of a large

dining and living room in a home in the US Aka houses have

about 4 m2 of space and do not have doors This means

children grow up in an environment with many adults and

children living very close by, and that it is easy to go in and

out of other families’ houses This enhances theopportunities for cooperative childcare, attachment to sev-eral others, and learning from nonparental adults It alsohelps to explain why adults are usually within view orearshot of children

Divorce and adult deaths are common among foragers(Hewlett 1991a, b) This means that older children andadolescents are not likely to live with both natural parentsand that they will live with stepparents or in single-parenthomes This may help to explain why cultural transmission

in adolescence may be more oblique than vertical

Finally, foragers regularly travel great distances,especially in adolescence and early adulthood (MacDonaldand Hewlett1999) Recent studies show that this travel andinter-camp interaction means that foragers meet about 1000individuals during their lifetime (Hill et al 2014) Thesedemographics help to understand the extensive number ofopportunities forager children may have for social learning(i.e., being able to watch and copy so many others) as well asexposure to and observe more innovations

1.2.3 Social-Emotional Setting: Cultural

Practices that Impact Social Learning

1.2.3.1 Intimacy

Physical proximity and emotional proximity are particularlyimportant to hunter-gatherers (Hewlett et al.2011) Foragersprefer to be physically close to others Compact campcomposition described above is just one example of this.When hunter-gatherers sit down in the camp, they areusually touching somebody Cross-cultural studies showthat forager caregivers are more likely than caregivers inother modes of production to hold infants, show more signs

of affection with infants, and are more responsive to fussingand crying (Hewlett et al.2000) A study that compared Bofiforager and farmer holding in 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds foundthat forager young children were held 44 %, 27 %, and 8 %

of daylight hours, while farmer children of the same agewere held 18 %, 2 %, and 0 % of the day (Fouts andBrookshire2009) In a study of conflicts between toddlersand older juveniles among the same hunter-gatherer andfarmer groups, Fouts and Lamb (2009) found that hunter-gatherer toddlers were substantially more likely to haveconflicts over staying close to juveniles, while farmertoddlers were more likely to have conflicts with juvenilesover competition for objects or over the juvenile hitting thetoddler, which never occurred among the hunter-gatherertoddlers Finally, Lewis (Chap 12) provides anotherexample of the importance of touch from his study of childspirit play singers: “Typically, singers sit together with theirlimbs resting on one another—literally ‘mixing up theirbodies’ (bo.saηganye njo), or dance in tight coordinatedformations.”

1.2.3.2 Self-Directed

Hunter-gatherer children do pretty much what they want

during the day Children climb into their parents’ laps or

sit next to them to watch them cook, play an instrument, or

make a spear Forager children often want to learn more than

what parents and others want to give Several chapters in this

volume describe the multiple ways in which learning from

others was self-motivated and self-directed by children This

pattern is in part due to the egalitarian and autonomy

foun-dational schema Parents seldom direct forager children

(sometimes parents try to give directives with mixed

suc-cess) because parents respect the autonomy and relatively

equal status of the child This occurs in early infancy For

instance, when Aka forager 3–4-month-old infants breastfed,

they took the breast on their own to nurse during 58 % of

feeding bout observations, whereas neighboring farmer

infants of the same age initiated breastfeeding on their own

in only 2 % of feeding bouts Farmer mothers decided when

to nurse or not the infant At weaning, hunter-gatherer

mothers said the child decided when she/he wanted to

wean, while farmer mothers said they decided when to

wean and often used dramatic techniques, such as putting

red fingernail polish on their nipples and telling their child it

is blood In a study of cosleeping (Hewlett and Roulette

2014) with foragers and farmers, the forager parents said

their children slept wherever they wanted, whereas the

farmer parents said they told their children where to sleep

1.2.3.3 Trust of Others

The development of trust of others is important to some

degree in all cultures, but the socialization for trust of several

others is particularly pronounced in hunter-gatherers, which

makes sense given their extensive sharing and giving

Hunter-gatherer infants and young children are breastfed

on demand, averaging about four bouts per hour, whereas

farmers average about two bouts per hour Some forager

young infants are often breastfed by women other than

mother, generally aunts and grandmothers (but sometimes

even fathers offered their breast), while among farmers,

breastfeeding by other women was thought to cause infant

sickness and was not practiced except under unusual

circumstances (Hewlett and Winn 2014) Cross-cultural

studies show that forager caregivers are significantly more

likely than caregivers in other modes of production to

respond to infant crying and farmer infants cry significantly

longer and more frequently than do forager infants (Hewlett

et al 1998, 2000) As mentioned above, hunter-gatherer

infants and young children are held significantly more than

similar aged children in other modes of production by many

different individuals—fathers, grandmothers, siblings,

others Attachment theory predicts (Bowlby1983) that the

high degree of responsiveness and proximity that forager

caregivers provide should enhance forager children’s trust

of self and self with others

1.2.3.4 Play

Several chapters in this volume describe the importance ofplay for learning politics, religion, dance, song, subsistenceskills, and knowledge Play is listed here because it is anintegral part of the forager learning environment Severalresearchers indicate that hunter-gatherer children in earlyand middle childhood spend most of the day playing andare not expected to contribute much to subsistence or main-tenance (Gosso et al.2005; Konner 2005) Hadza childrenare the exception to this general pattern and forage exten-sively, but this is voluntary and not expected by parents(Crittendon, Chap 5) By comparison to foragers, children

in farming and pastoral communities are more likely to begiven responsibilities for childcare and other tasks (Barry

et al.1959) Foragers in middle childhood spend a able amount of time playing, playing hunting and gathering,and laying around (Boyette in press; Hewlett and Boyette

consider-2012; Kamei 2005; Imamura, Chap 12) All of this playtakes place in child-only groups, and most of the playinvolves learning about foundational schema and making aliving as a hunter and gatherer as well as learning about themodern world (Boyette in press; Kamei 2005; Pandya,Chap.16)

The four features of social-emotional setting are tioned because educators and developmental psychologistsindicate that these features enhance social learning (Meir

men-2002; Nell et al 2013) Learning processes tend to beenhanced if (a) the learner trusts the teacher, (b) the skill

is acquired in emotive and play contexts, (c) the learner

is able to engage and direct his/her own learning, and(d) the teacher understands the learners’ zone ofproximal development and is able to scaffold Both(a) and (d) develop out of the intimate nature of foragerdaily life, i.e., physical and emotional proximity promotesthe trust as well as detailed understanding by the “teacher”

of the “learner” abilities and can therefore sequence andscaffold on what the learner already knows The social-cognitive features of the hunter-gatherer learning environ-ment help to explain some of the results from thevarious chapters as well as why forager children learnquickly, easily, and without much verbal instruction.Studies show that forager children know most skills andknowledge necessary to make a living by age 10 (Hewlettand Cavalli-Sforza 1986; Hewlett and Lamb 2005) and insome cases provide up to 50 % of their own calories by age

presented here, and Chaps.2,3, and8provide more detailed

literature reviews of the issues The terminologies and

debates are used and discussed in several chapters in

the book

1.3.1 From Whom Do Children Learn?

Children can learn from many different individuals, and

researchers from various disciplines have hypothesized

about the importance of various potential contributors to

social learning Social-cultural anthropologists and some

developmental psychologists indicate culture is a “provider

of settings” (Whiting and Whiting1975) that exposes

chil-dren to particular types of individuals and learning

environments The Whiting’s (1975) cross-cultural studies

of children indicate that the physical and social settings of

children pattern their learning opportunities Culture,

pri-marily subsistence systems, influences where children go

during the day, with whom they interact, and potentially

what they will learn If men hunt large game and women

gather, children seldom accompany men, and therefore

chil-dren spend most of the day with their mothers and other

children If both men and women hunt together, such as with

several net-hunting Congo Basin foragers, children have

learning access to a broad range of adults and children By

contrast, “culture” in nation states requires children to attend

formal education schools where children learn from similar

aged peers and teachers Developmental psychologists such

as Bronfenbrenner (1979) and Vygotsky (1978) also

empha-size how social-cultural institutions impact the individuals

from whom children learn

Evolutionary approaches are also very interested in from

whom children learn and have emphasized the trade-offs

(i.e., costs and benefits) of learning from different types of

individuals Children are predicted to want to learn from

parents in stable environments, but if the environment is

rapidly changing, beliefs or practices of parents may be

outdated and instead turn to peers or other adults for

updating Evolutionary approaches also indicate that

paren-tal transmission of culture contributes to intracultural

diver-sity (each child learns cultural variants from his/her parents)

and high conservation of cultural features (more resistant to

change) Learning from nonparental others, such as peers

(called horizontal) or other adults (called oblique), is

impacted by the frequency of interaction with them and

can lead to cultural conformity and rapid culture change if

interactions are frequent Both are hypothesized to be

pathways for the introduction of innovations The terms

vertical, horizontal, and oblique come from evolutionary

theories (Cavalli Sforza and Feldman 1981), but these

groups of individuals are equally important for

social-cultural anthropologists and developmental psychologists

For instance, debates exist in cultural anthropology as towhether parents or the general group are more important inthe transmission of culture in hunter-gatherer societies(Hewlett and Cavalli Sfora1986), and debates in develop-mental psychology focus on whether parents or peers aremore likely to impact children’s learning (Harris 1998).Table 1.2 lists and defines these various types of peoplefrom whom children can learn

Evolutionary approaches also emphasize the agency ofchildren and indicate that they use learning strategies whenselecting models to imitate Young children may learn fromparents in infancy and early childhood because they arenearby (low cost of learning) and have an emotional bondand trust with parents, but as they get older, they arepredicted to evaluate the knowledge and abilities of others

in determining which cultural variants to adopt The

“abilities and features” in Table 1.2 identify some of thedifferent qualities of individuals children are hypothesized

to consider in making decisions as to whom to watch, tate, and learn (Rendell et al.2011; Mesoudi2011; Henrichand McElreath2003) Some child development researchers(Harris2012) are interested in determining factors that influ-ence the “selective trust” of children and indicate that youngchildren preferentially learn from close family members due

imi-to the emotional attachment and familiarity, but by middlechildhood, emotional trust is less important, and they evalu-ate the reliability of knowledge and abilities of others as thebasis for who they imitate This is an emerging area of study

in hunter-gatherer studies Research with children fromurban industrial cultures with substantial political and eco-nomic stratification have demonstrated that older childrenpay attention to prestige or success, but focused studies withegalitarian foragers are limited (Chudek et al 2013).Chapters in this volume are some of the first to considerthese issues in foragers

The “group impact” and “institutional forces” in Table1.2

have been identified as important factors for learning inWEIRD cultures (Rogoff2003), but few systematic studieswith foragers exist Group impact factors are sometimescalled “many-to-one” forms of transmission, arehypothesized to contribute to high conservation of culture,and likely impact learning in hunter-gatherers Copying themost common cultural variants in a group is likely to occurbecause forager living densities are high (i.e., camps aresmall but very compact) Concerted transmission is alsolikely because adolescent initiation ceremonies for bothboys and girls are relatively common in forager cultures(Hewlett and Hewlett2012; Lewis, Chap.12) “Institutionalforces” are all examples of what are called one-to-manytransmission, are hypothesized to contribute to rapid culturechange, and are relatively rare in active hunter-gatherergroups (but common in hunter-gatherer groups exposed toformal education and media technologies)

1.3.1.1 Previous Hunter-Gatherer Studies on from

Whom Children Learn

Early systematic studies with foragers suggested that parents

were particularly important Aka hunter-gatherer adults,

adolescents, and children were asked how they learned a

list of 50 skills Overall, they indicated that about 80 % oftheir knowledge about subsistence, childcare, sharing, andother skills was acquired from their parents, generally fromthe same-sex parent (Hewlett and Cavalli Sfora1986) Otherstudies with Congo Basin hunter-gatherers (Aunger 2000;Hattori2010) and North American Cree foragers (Ohmagariand Berkes1997) that asked adults about how they learnedparticular knowledge or skills also identified parents asimportant

By contrast, several other studies with foragersindicated that peers or nonparental adults were primarytransmitters of skills and knowledge Macdonald (2007)reviewed ethnographies on how children learn to huntand suggested that both parents and nonparental adultswere key contributors, Bird and Bliege Bird (2005)conducted an observational study of Martu children andfound that children learn how to hunt lizards without adultsand that older children played key roles (horizontal), andReyes Garcia et al (2009) interviewed Tsimane forager-farmers about their ethnobotanical knowledge and analyzedwho shared knowledge with particular others and found thatnonparental adults (oblique) were particularly influential.Reyes-Garcia et al (2009) found little evidence of horizontaltransmission Building upon the “two-stage” model pro-posed by Henrich et al (2008), Hewlett et al (2011)indicated that early social learning in foragers was primarilyvertical, in large part due to attachment and the low cost oflearning from nearby parents, whereas in middle childhoodand adolescence, children learn more from peers in practiceand play and nonparental adults, especially in late adoles-cence when they evaluate the abilities and status ofnonparental adults

Chapters 2, 4, 6, 7, 13, 17, 18, and 22 consider theabovementioned issues and debates

1.3.2 How Do Children Learn?

Different theoretical orientations identify various processes

by which children learn This section briefly describes threegeneral theoretical orientations and associated learning pro-cesses used by authors in this book

1.3.2.1 Evolutionary Approaches

All of the chapters in Part I and Chaps.13,17,22,24, and

25use evolutionary frameworks to examine topics in sociallearning Evolutionists identify several learning processesthat occur in animals (Hoppitt and Laland2013), but studieswith humans have focused on imitation and teaching.Table1.3lists and provides definitions of the primary pro-cesses identified by evolutionary researchers who have stud-ied human social learning (Whiten2011)

Table 1.2 Potential types of individuals from whom children

can learn

General features

1 Age-kin relationships

Parents (vertical) Children learn from parents

Peers (horizontal) Children learn from similar aged

individuals Other adults (oblique) Children learn from nonparental

adults

2 Abilities and features of individuals

Prestige Children want to learn from

individuals with qualities admired

by the group (e.g., giving, healing, hunting)

Dominance Children want to learn from

individuals who are able to dominate others

Skill/knowledge Children want to learn from

individuals with greater skills or knowledge

Familiarity Children prefer to learn from

individuals who look, sound (same language), and act like them Attachment Children are likely to want to stay

near and learn from best friends and close family

Gender Children prefer to learn from

children of the same gender Age Children prefer to learn from older

children and adults Success Children are more likely to watch

and adopt cultural variants from individuals with more children, resources, or other measures of success

3 Group impact

Many individuals have the

same cultural variant

(conformist)

Children observe the group and adopt common cultural variants Group organizes to transmit

cultural variants (concerted)

Adults organize and systematically transmit particular cultural variants, e.g., adolescent initiation rituals

4 Institutional and technological forces

Institutional teachers Children learn from teachers in

formal schools or in an apprenticeship Leaders Children adopt (by choice or

imposition) cultural variants transmitted by political leaders Media technologies Children adopt cultural variants

transmitted by TV, the Internet, and other technologies

The first two processes provide social learning

opportunities to children by exposing children to particular

environments or tools The daily lived experiences of adults

or older children, such as taking children for a walk on forest

trails to find fruits, nuts, mushrooms, and other resources,

draw the children’s attention to these resources, where they

are located, prepared, consumed, etc The “observe and

copy” set of processes all deal with various forms of

tion in humans Considerable debate exists on human

imita-tion Some researchers (Tomasello 1996) suggest that “true”

imitation requires the cognitive capacity for intentionality,

which is generally limited to humans, whereas others

indi-cate imitation exists in other animals (Byrne 2002) The

“other” processes in Table 1.3 include the evolutionary

definition of general teaching and two other forms of

teach-ing, natural pedagogy and behavioral reinforcement

Chapters 2,3,6,17, and22discuss teaching in

hunter-gatherers in greater detail

Chapters by Hagino and Yamauchi (Chap 11), Lewis(Chap 12), Yamagami (Chap 21), and Dira and Hewlett(Chap.6) provide examples of children’s collaborative learningactivities and processes Part VI of the book also uses evolu-tionary approaches but focuses on macro-level (i.e., stages)analyses of human biocultural evolution to address the Nean-derthal question of social learning mentioned above

1.3.2.2 Social-Cultural Anthropology

and Participatory Approaches

As mentioned, social learning has been of interest to cultural anthropologists for a long time, but most of thestudies with small-scale cultures have been conducted withsubsistence farmers “Socialization” or “enculturation” stud-ies were an important anthropological topic between 1920and 1970 in part because of the influence of Freudian psy-chology that indicated adult personality characteristics weredetermined by childhood socialization practices such asfeeding, weaning, and obedience training The term sociali-zation is not used as much as it was in the past; researcherstoday are more likely to use the term cultural learning or theanthropology of learning (Lancy et al.2011)

social-Social-cultural anthropologists and cross-culturalpsychologists who have worked with small-scale cultureshave published extensively on learning in cultures withoutformal education Table1.4identifies and defines some of thesocial learning processes that have emerged from these studies

Table 1.3 Social learning processes from evolutionary biology

Definition and description Providing access to learn

Local

enhancement

Attention of a child is directed toward a place or resources that a person is interacting with, e.g., taking a walk on a trail to find nuts

Stimulus

enhancement

Attention of a child is drawn to objects provided by another person, e.g., giving a child a knife or gathering basket

Observe and copy

Mimic The child copies the actions of others without

understanding their purpose, goal, or intention.

Later the child comes to discover the effects of the action in different situations, e.g., child mimics the behaviors of animals

Emulation The child observes a particular effect on an object

when someone interacts with it The child is motivated to reproduce the effect but uses her/his own methodology to do so

Imitation The child copies the actions of a model to obtain

the same effects using the same objects Overimitation The child copies relevant as well as irrelevant

actions to obtain the same effects using the same objects

Reinforcement Child receives positive or negative reinforcement

for a particular behavior Learning together

Collaborative

learning

Children utilize one another ’s resources and skills, e.g., asking one another for information, evaluating one another ’s ideas, to solve a problem or learn a skill

Table 1.4 Social learning processes from social-cultural anthropology and cross-cultural psychology

Key to all social-cultural approaches

Observation and imitation Careful observation, listening, and

copying of those with skills or knowledge

Forms of teaching Direct instruction Verbal explanation, demonstration Narrative Stories with information about skills

or knowledge Feedback Positive or negative evaluation of skill

or behavior Scaffolding Mentor uses sequential steps to build

upon and be sensitive to the child ’s existing skill or knowledge level Formal education Children learn skills and knowledge

through curriculum organized by teacher in institution outside of adult productive activities

Participatory processes Intent community participation

Learning through observation and listening during participation in shared endeavors

Legitimate peripheral participation (situated learning)

Children learn skills and knowledge

by participating in simple but productive tasks in the community of practice

(continued)

All researchers working with small-scale cultures

empha-size the importance of children’s keen observation, listening,

and then imitating others with the skills or knowledge These

researchers have argued that formal teaching, as is known in

urban industrial cultures, is rare or nonexistent in small-scale

cultures However, all the processes listed in Table1.4, with

the exception of observation and imitation, are processes

that are consistent with the evolutionary definition of

teach-ing, i.e., individuals modify their behavior to enhance

learning in another (Hewlett et al 2011; Kline 2014)

Gaskins and Paradise (2010) indicate that small-scale

cultures use directed instruction, storytelling, and

scaffold-ing, while Lancy and Grove (2010) describe how the chore

curriculum, apprenticeships, and initiation ceremonies all

contribute to children’s social learning All these processes

require demonstrators to modify their behaviors to help

others learn

Several cross-cultural psychologists have compared

social learning in informal versus formal education systems

and have made significant contributions to the learning

liter-ature (Rogoff 2003; Greenfield 2004; Lave and Wenger

2001) by emphasizing that formal education systems are

not always efficient and that children’s active and motivated

participation in adult activities contributes to rapid

acquisi-tion of complex skills Rogoff et al (1993, 2003) use the

terms intent community participation and guided

participa-tion, and Lave and Wenger (2001) use the terms situated

learning and legitimate peripheral participation to describe

the importance of these participatory approaches to learning

These participatory researchers indicate that multiple

processes of social learning are necessary for children to

acquire complex skills such as weaving Greenfield and

Lave (1982: 206) conclude their review of learning crafts:

“Teaching by demonstration ” is not a sufficient characterization

of informal teaching techniques “Learning by observation

and imitation ” is not sufficient to account for learning activities

in either the weaving or tailoring settings (italics from

authors).

They go on to say that other processes such as verbalexplanation, cooperative learning, scaffolding, and trial anderror also contribute to the learning of these crafts Hunter-gatherer researchers have seldom utilized participatoryapproaches (but see Takada 2015 for a recent exception)possibly because foragers do not have formalapprenticeships or craft specialization, the focal topics ofmajor contributors to this approach (i.e., Rogoff, Greenfield,Lave, and Lancy) The chapters in Part II as well as chapters

by Lewis (Chap.12) and Imamura (Chap 15) are some ofthe first to use these approaches in foraging communities,and chapters by Koyama (Chap.20) and Takada (Chap.8)provide examples of scaffolding

1.3.2.3 Social Learning and Play

The abovementioned “participatory” approaches tend toemphasize children’s engagement in adult productive

“work,” such as chores, learning a craft, or, in the case offoragers, participating in hunting and gathering Anothercontext of social learning that has received less attention

by social-cultural anthropologists is play (see Chick 2010

for a review) Social-cultural anthropologists and mental psychologists have described various types of play,such as rough and tumble play, pretend role-play play, andgames with rules Developmental psychologists (Pelligrini

develop-2009) indicate children’s play has three functions: learningfuture skills, learning skills for current survival and adapta-tion, and a source of innovation to adapt to newenvironments The limited number of hunter-gatherer stud-ies of play (Kamei2005; Bock2005a,b; Gosso et al.2005;Hewlett and Boyette2012) and the chapters in this volumeprovide empirical support for the first two, but question thelast Play is an integral part of hunter-gatherer life Foragersmay play more often than individuals in other subsistencesystems because they have relatively more leisure time than

in other ways of life (Lee and Daly 2004) As in othercultures, the frequency of play in forager childhood declineswith age (Boyette, Chap.13), but ethnographers emphasizeits persistence into adulthood (Imamura, Chap.14) Chapters

by Lewis (Chap 12), Dira and Hewlett (Chap 6), andMusharbash (Chap 14) demonstrate how adults use playand humor to promote the learning of core values, skills,and knowledge Chapters by Boyette (Chap.13), Imamura(Chap.15), and Musharbash (Chap.14) illustrate how playwith other children enhances social learning of forager’sskills and knowledge

1.3.2.4 Social Learning and Embodiment

Social-cultural anthropologists’ embodiment approaches tosocial learning emphasize that learning occurs through thebody and is not just in the mind (Ingold 2001) Whenlearning to dance, a child imitates others but the learning isnot limited to cognitive or symbolic knowledge in the mind;

Table 1.4 (continued)

Guided participation Children acquire skills or knowledge

by their active participation in adult activities with experienced individuals

Chores Children learn skills and knowledge

by adults giving them age appropriate productive chores

Apprenticeship Mentor provides child with learning

opportunities by making skills accessible and with some direct instruction

Initiation Children, primarily adolescents,

acquire core values and symbolic culture during adult-directed ritual activities

the information and knowledge are also stored in many parts

of the body (e.g., in muscles and neurons) (Downey2010)

The approach is somewhat consistent with the participatory

approaches because it focuses on “doing” particular

activities as well as with Bourdieu’s (1977) emphasis as

habitus as the central way children learn culture, but

partici-patory and habitus approaches do not focus on the body

Chapters by Kaneko (Chap.18), Takada (Chap.8), Sonoda

(Chap 9), Hagino and Yamauchi (Chap 11), and Peng

(Chap 7) emphasize the importance of bodily movement

and active participation and involvement in the acquisition

of culture

1.3.2.5 Social Learning and Language

The evolutionary processes of learning described above are

useful for understanding social learning from a cross-species

perspective, but they are limited because spoken language is

unique to humans Clearly, language is a key cognitive

ability in humans that enables rapid, precise, and

high-fidelity social learning The participatory approaches and

several chapters in this volume indicate that verbal

explanations and interactions are limited in small-scale

cul-ture social learning (especially in comparison to formal

education systems), but it can and is used in several

impor-tant ways Chapters by Takada (Chap.8), Sonoda (Chap.9),

and Musharbash (Chap.14) illustrate the subtle but key ways

that language facilitates social learning

1.3.2.6 Indigenous Approaches to Social Learning

Another social-cultural anthropology approach to social

learning might be called indigenous, native, or “emic.”

This approach focuses on how local people think and feel

about how children learn skills and knowledge Chapters by

Naveh (Chap.10) and Omura (Chap.23) in particular

pro-vide insights into how foragers think about how children

learn Some indigenous ideas are consistent with the

pro-cesses listed in Tables 1.3 and 1.4 (i.e., by watching and

imitating, participating), but some local perspectives provide

insight into other ways of thinking about how children learn

(e.g., togetherness of making knowledge in Naveh,

Chap.10)

Few studies exist on social learning in foragers, but even

fewer studies have been conducted on innovation in

contem-porary hunter-gatherers (see Jordan2014for a recent

excep-tion) It is unfortunate because innovation is key to

understanding cumulative culture and human abilities to

adapt to new or changing natural and social environments

The social learning mechanisms described above contribute

to keeping a vast array of cultural variants in a population

long enough and with high enough fidelity so thatinnovations can be added to and sometimes (not all aspects

of culture are adaptive) improve upon existing culturalvariants Innovation is the source of cultural variability andcomplexity

Some researchers distinguish invention (creating thing new) from innovation—invention that is adopted bymany others (i.e., it is a successful invention) (O’Brien andShennan 2010) The three chapters in Part IV and severalchapters in Part V of the book examine innovations—newtechniques, beliefs, or practices that have been adopted byothers Research shows that the vast majority of innovationsare not entirely new; they are novel recombinations or smalladditions to existing beliefs, practices, technology,institutions, etc The chapters in this volume examine some

some-of the following questions: Who innovates? Why do theyinnovate? What do they innovate? Who adopts theinnovations? How do others acquire the innovations?Theoretical and observational reasons exist to suggestthat creativity and innovation are common among hunter-gatherers Theoretically, Henrich (2010) indicates thatdemography is key for understanding innovation andhypothesizes that the innovativeness (i.e., rate of innovation)

of a culture is based largely upon its population size and thenature of its cultural interconnectivity (e.g., ritual, political,economic, and other networks that encourage contacts withother people) Forager population densities are low, but theyare known for their extensive and regular long-distancetravel as well as their ritual-economic networks MacDonaldand Hewlett (1999) show that foragers travel farther thanfarmers during their lifetime, often to visit distant family andfriends In terms of cultural long-distance social networks,Wiessner (1977) describes extensive hxaro exchangenetworks among the !Kung San, and Lewis (2015) identifiesthe extensive networks and movement of spirit plays anddances among the BaYaka The recent Hill et al study(2014) on the social-economic networks of two foragergroups, Ache´ and Hadza, found that an average foragermeets about 1000 others during his/her lifetime

Common social structures of forager life may also tribute to regular innovation Some forager culturalstructures encourage “do what the rest of the group is notdoing.” Evolutionary theorists call this anticonformist bias(Henrich and Boyd 1998), and those that study music anddance cross-culturally call it “improvisation” (Furniss2014).Forager dances and songs are often organized and structured

con-in a way that encourages con-innovation or modification Dancesmay start in lines with everyone doing the same movementsand steps, but there comes a point when each individualmoves out of the line or the circle and dances on his/herown using different steps and movements Furniss (2014)provides the details of the improvisation that is structuredinto Congo Basin forager music In the passage below,

Lewis (Chap 12) demonstrates how the autonomous

modifications of individuals are incorporated into BaYaka

song:

Each singer has to hold their own melody, avoiding entrainment

to melodies sung by others (if too many sing the same melody

the polyphony dissolves), while being in harmony with them.

This cultivates a particular sense of personal autonomy that is

not selfish or self-obsessed, but is keenly aware of what others

are doing and seeks to complement this by doing something

different.

The material above provides an overview of the theoretical

and topical issues that authors in this volume used to frame

their studies of social learning and innovation This section

highlights a limited number of relatively new and insightful

results from particular chapters The theoretically and

meth-odologically diverse approaches provide important and

sometimes novel contributions to the literature

Some results from hunter-gatherer research were

con-sistent with studies of social learning with subsistence

farmers: (a) authors consistently reported that observation

and imitation were the most common learning processes;

(b) the majority of authors indicated that direct verbal

instruction was either explicitly discouraged or very rare;

(c) several authors indicated that children seldom, if ever,

asked questions when trying to acquire a particular skill or

knowledge; and (d) several authors indicated that foragers

primarily learned by practice and doing, i.e., participation

in daily activities and bodily engagement, rather than by

linguistic articulation These features of social learning

appear to be common to most small-scale or “traditional”

cultures

1.5.1 From Whom Forager Children Learn?

(a) Reyes-Garcia et al (Chap.4) provide cross-cultural

evi-dence for a multistage model (versus the two-stage

model of Henrich and Broesch (2011)) of cultural

trans-mission where vertical transtrans-mission is important in

infancy and young childhood and horizontal

transmis-sion and oblique transmistransmis-sion become more common in

middle childhood and adolescence

(b) Vertical transmission was important in infancy and early

childhood (Hewlett et al., Chap 3; Musharbash,

Chap.14); horizontal transmission of skills and

knowl-edge was particularly important in observational field

studies of middle childhood (Reyes-Garcia et al.,

Chap.4; Lewis, Chap.12; Boyette, Chap.13; Imamura,

Chap.15; Pandya, Chap.16); and oblique transmissionwas common in late adolescence (Reyes-Garcia et al.,Chap 4; Dira and Hewlett, Chap 6; BL Hewlett,Chap.17)

(c) A cross-cultural literature review of hunter-gathererethnographers that describe social learning found thatvertical transmission and oblique transmission over abroad range of skills and knowledge were equally impor-tant, but that ethnographers (Garfield et al., Chap 2)infrequently mentioned horizontal transmission.(d) Different methods to evaluate modes of transmissionand acquisition may contribute to different results Diraand Hewlett (Chap 6) found that when Chabu adultswere asked about from whom boys generally learn tospear hunt, all informants answered fathers (vertical);when the adult men were asked how they themselveslearned to spear hunt, 80 % said their father; but whenadolescents were asked about how they recently learned

to spear hunt, only 18 % mentioned their fathers Only

11 % reported going on their first spear hunt with theirfather, and only 14 % preferred to spear hunt with theirfather Observational and time allocation studies of Bakaand Aka middle childhood indicate that forager childrenspent most of their day with other children and thathorizontal transmission was especially important(Reyes Garcia et al., Chap 4; Boyette, Chap 13),whereas the literature review found little evidence ofhorizontal transmission

1.5.2 How Do Forager Children Learn?

(a) Various forms of teaching, defined as modification ofbehavior to enhance learning in others, exist in hunter-gatherers (Chaps.2,3,15,17, and23) It is particularlycommon in Aka forager infancy, its frequency declines

in middle childhood, and increases in frequency in lescence with the acquistion of complex skills andknowledge The cross-cultural study of social learningindicated that teaching (from demonstration to storytell-ing) was the most common process of social learningreported by ethnographers

ado-(b) A particular form of teaching, natural pedagogy, existed

in hunter-gatherer infancy, but the process relied more

on touch and pointing and less on verbal interactions(i.e., the use of personal name, motherese) than it did inurban industrial cultures (Hewlett et al., Chap.3) Teas-ing, described in several chapters, used many features ofnatural pedagogy—i.e., children had to pay attention tothe adult’s use of facial expressions, gestures, and tone

of voice in order to obtain the meaning of the teasing

(Omura, Chap 23) Yamagami (Chap 21) described

how Baka children seldom talked during her

experiments but were more likely to use pointing,

gaz-ing, and murmuring to draw attention to somethgaz-ing, and

Sonoda’s (Chap 9) microanalysis of rat hunting

provided several instances where older children or adults

used pointing to draw a child’s attention to something,

e.g., a rat, a rat tunnel, or where a rat may run

(c) On the other hand, several authors indicated that some

forms of teaching (e.g., verbal explanation, scolding,

direct teaching) were explicitly discouraged or avoided

(Lewis, Chap.12; Naveh; Chap.10; Omura, Chap.23)

because they were inconsistent with forager foundational

schema of autonomy and egalitarianism Omura stated

“teaching, scolding, or forcing teenagers to do

some-thing is considered discourteous because they do have

reason, albeit under-developed, and thus must be

accorded respect for their autonomy.”

(d) Several authors stated that teaching was rare or that a

word for teaching did not exist, but the authors were

generally referring to direct verbal instruction common

to formal education systems Many cultures did not have

terms for teaching, but some had a term for advice

Omura (Chap.23) states that Inuit are “virtually

forbid-den from teaching teenagers,” but much of the chapter

described how adults use playful teasing (a form of

teaching) to prepare children for “the spirit of

approaching difficulties.” Lewis (Chap 12) stated

BaYaka do not have a word for teaching but describes

an example of teaching when young children learn

music “Any infant or small child that makes an attempt

at musical performance is immediately and often

lav-ishly praised, and encouraged to continue regardless of

the quality of their performance.”

(e) Microlevel analysis of videotapes picked up more subtle

and brief instances of teaching and verbal guidance (both

teaching and verbal information often occur within a few

seconds) than did informal participant observation or

focal follows

(f) While rare and limited, verbal guidance and children

asking questions were evident in a few chapters

Sonoda’s (Chap.9) study showed that the oldest person

in a rat-hunting expedition verbally instructed others

about a wide range of actions, e.g., “you leave the rat,

even if he comes up,” and “go look there.” Dira and

Hewlett (Chap6) found that on actual spear hunts, adults

regularly gave brief verbal guidance to adolescents

dur-ing the hunt Takada (Chap 8) described how teenage

girls verbally encouraged and guided a 3-year-old

danc-ing But in all the abovementioned cases, the verbal

comments were very limited and brief

(g) Rough teasing of children is used in several foragergroups (Crittenden, Chap 5; Dira and Hewlett,Chap 6; Omura Chap 23; Musharbash, Chap 14).Rough teasing of children was used to help childrenlearn to share, how to hunt, what is dangerous in theenvironment, about the difficulties of life, about how tocontrol emotions, and how to become what is considered

a mature adult in the culture Rough teasing may be anextension of rough joking (i.e., joking insults to someonewho tries to draw attention to himself) frequentlydescribed in the hunter-gatherer literature andhypothesized to be a mechanism to maintain egalitarian-ism (Lee and Daly 2004) Teasing can be a form ofteaching as well as a form of play

(h) Overimitation exists in hunter-gatherer adults but occursless frequently in younger children than it does in manystudies of children in urban industrial settings (Hewlett

et al., Chap.3)

(i) Collaborate learning among children is an importantsocial learning process in hunter-gatherers Hagino andYamauchi (Chap.11) indicated Baka children collabora-tively learn to bail fish and hunt for rats without thepresence of any adults, Lewis (Chap.12) described sev-eral instances of children learning collaboratively todance and sing, Dira and Hewlett (Chap 6) describedhow children in middle childhood collaborativelylearned to spear hunt through role-playing, and Omura(Chap 23) stated that collaborative learning was a keyprocess by which Inuit children learn to hunt

(j) Kinesthetic movement and gestures were importantfeatures of forager learning in several chapters (Takada,Chap 8; Sonoda, Chap 9; Lewis, Chap.; 12; Naveh,Chap.10)

(k) Competition was rare in forager social learning petitive games with rules were rare (Boyette, Chap.13),and Yamagami (Chap 21) reported that competitionbetween children was rare in her art experiments.(l) Evidence exists that selected trust and model-basedbiases exist in foragers Dira and Hewlett (Chap 6)found that adolescent Chabu boys preferred to spearhunt more frequently with nonparental adults withreputations for getting lots of game or knowing the foresttrails even though their fathers were present BL Hewlett(Chap 17) found that Aka and Chabu innovators hadprestige and that many adolescents sought to learnfrom them

Com-(m) Evidence exists that teaching ability is another feature

of children’s selected trust (from those listed inTable 1.2) Aka adolescents sought out innovatorswho were good teachers (BL Hewlett, Chap 17), andsome Chabu adolescents indicated that they preferred to

learning to spear hunt from good teachers (Dira and

Hewlett, Chap.6)

(n) The desire to play motivated learning and children

learned about religion, political, and economic practices

through play (Lewis, Chap.12; Pandya, 16)

1.5.3 Innovation

(a) Young and middle-aged Aka adults rather than

adolescents or other children created technological

innovations, and these innovations were transmitted

from adults (oblique) rather than peers (horizontal)

(BL Hewlett, Chap.17)

(b) More stylistic innovations were created by Baka

dren working on collaborative art projects than

chil-dren working on projects on their own (Yamagami

Chap.21)

(c) A market economy increased the innovation rates of

commodities traded or sold at markets (Kaneko,

Chap.18; BL Hewlett, Chap.17; Kubota, Chap.19)

(d) Vertical transmission (parent to child) of innovations in

craft specializations (clay pots, art for markets) was

common (Kaneko, Chap 18; BL Hewlett, Chap 17;

Kubota, Chap.19)

(e) Chabu innovations were transmitted by observation,

imi-tation, and teaching (BL Hewlett, Chap 17), whereas

Aari innovations were transmitted by observation and

imitation (Kaneko, Chap.18)

(f) Aka children spent more time in creative play—

providing practice in invention/innovation—than in

imi-tation of adults or peers (Boyette, Chap.13)

The book is organized into six parts The first two parts are

organized by theoretical orientation: Part I focuses on

evolution-ary approaches to social learning, while chapters in Part II utilize

theoretical orientations from social-cultural anthropology The

Garfield et al chapter in Part I is different from most of the other

chapters in the book because the study is based upon a

cross-cultural review of the hunter-gatherer literature on social

learning All of the other chapters are field-based ethnographic

studies of social learning Part III uses a variety of theoretical

perspectives to examine how play in hunter-gatherers is used to

learn egalitarianism, dance, song, religion, and deal with the

outside world Part IV as well as some chapters in Part III

consider innovation in hunter-gatherers Part V has two chapters

by developmental psychologists on the cognitive abilities ofBaka foragers of Cameroon The final chapters in Part VI focus

on how the study of social learning in contemporary gatherers helps researchers understand the human evolutionquestion of why Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans.Finally, we did not require authors to adhere to astandardized set of definitions because they came from dif-ferent disciplines and utilized various theoretical and meth-odological approaches Most authors are social-culturalanthropologists, but others are developmental psychologists,educators, and biological anthropologists

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Evolutionary Approaches to Social Learning: Modes

and Processes of Social Learning

A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Hunter-Gatherer

23 diverse societies Oblique and vertical transmission appear at similar rates Variousforms of teaching are the most common processes of social learning and account for morethan half of all coded texts Vertical and oblique social learning are predominantlycharacterized by teaching, whereas horizontal social learning is primarily through collabo-rative learning Approximations of age reveal a general developmental pattern in whichsocial learning of miscellaneous skills characterizes infancy, subsistence skills dominateearly and middle childhood, and the social learning of religious beliefs are most frequentduring adolescence Across development we identify a reduction in the importance ofvertical transmission in favor of oblique transmission, for subsistence skills in particular.These results highlight the importance of teaching in the ethnographic record of hunter-gatherer social learning and provide a systematic, cross-cultural, framework for theoreticalmodels to rely on

Keywords

Hunter-gatherersHuman Relations Area FilesSocial learningCultural transmission

Teaching

The primary goal of this study is to identify and analyze the

cross-cultural occurrence of various modes and processes of

social learning in distinct cultural domains among

hunter-gatherers Understanding the lifeways of hunter-gatherers

requires a broad, holistic perspective incorporating multiplemethodological approaches Even a cursory ethnographicreview reveals immense diversity within (Draper andCashdan 1988) and between hunter-gatherer societies(Cummings et al.2014; Kelly 2013; Lee and Daly 1999).Comparative approaches utilizing data on multiple huntingand gathering societies have been informative (Boehm2008;Ember1978; Marlowe2005) and provide important meth-odological tools to systematically investigate and betterunderstand a wide sample of forager groups (Munroe andGauvain 2010) We consulted ethnographic materials on

Z.H Garfield ( * )  M.J Garfield  B.S Hewlett

Department of Anthropology, Washington State University,

Vancouver, WA, USA

e-mail: zachary.garfield@wsu.edu

# Springer Japan 2016

H Terashima, B.S Hewlett (eds.), Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers,

Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series, DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-55997-9_2

19

hunter-gatherers in the electronic Human Relations Area

Files (eHRAF) to determine the relationships between

cul-tural domains, modes, and processes of culcul-turally

transmit-ted and acquired information with reference to established

evolutionary theoretical models Despite the limitations of

ethnography-based comparative research, the ethnographic

record of hunter-gatherers is a resource that should not go

overlooked The specifics of social learning among small kin

group-based forager populations are likely to reveal the

expression of psychological mechanisms that facilitate

adap-tive learning in these environments (Tooby and Cosmides

1990) An evolutionary account of social learning must

incorporate the descriptive accounts of learning across a

wide range of foraging populations (Bock 2010) This

approach can provide insights about the universality of the

acquisition of culture and also the degree to which the

environment and cultural values shape social cues

facilitating learning

Social learning has been a widely discussed topic,

and theoretical models have been developed from case

studies and ethnographic research across diverse cultural

settings (Cavalli-Sforza et al 1982; Henrich and Broesch

2011; Hewlett and Cavalli-Sforza 1986; Reyes-Garcı´a

et al.2009) We seek to further validate these models and

provide cross-cultural data on the prevalence of the

components of social learning To our knowledge this is

the first HRAF investigation of cultural transmission

among hunter-gatherer societies This study utilizes the

rich and detailed information ethnographers have produced

and is intended to supplement field-based research on

hunter-gatherer social learning (Hewlett et al.2011;

Reyes-Garcı´a et al.2009)

of Culture

Anthropologists have been interested in understanding the

diversity and universality of cultural learning processes

since the inception of the discipline (Munroe and Gauvain

2010; Mead1964; Tylor1871) Social learning is at the root

of culture, and neither social learning nor culture is unique to

humans (Box and Gibson 1999; Laland and Galef 2009;

Perry2011) Although a number of cultural behaviors have

been identified among other species such as ground-living

monkeys, apes, and particularly chimpanzees, human culture

is cumulative in nature and clearly an outlier among social

animals (Laland and Hoppitt 2003; Whiten 2011) Our

capacity for cultural transmission and the complex methods

by which we deliver social information is an important

feature promoting these distinctions

Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman define cultural transmission

as the acquisition of a cultural trait or the units of culture that

are learned and subject to evolutionary change, by oneindividual from another, and may involve lengthy processes

of social learning (Cavalli-Sforza 1981) However, as themodels of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman have identified, cul-tural transmission is not restricted to dyadic relationships,but include many-to-one and one-to-many contexts of trans-mission (Cavalli-Sforza et al.1982) We use this expandeddefinition, conceptualizing cultural transmission as the pro-cess of communicating socially learned information fromone individual or group to another individual or group(Cavalli-Sforza 1981; Cavalli-Sforza et al 1982) Models

of cultural transmission have identified multiplemechanisms by which culture spreads and revealed thatpatterns are often specific to cultural domains, such as reli-gion or politics (Cavalli-Sforza et al.1982)

Modes of cultural transmission specify the context of theacquisition of culture, who is transmitting culture, and who

is acquiring culture Theoretical models describing the mission of culture have used systems of genetic transmission

trans-as a foundation and point of comparison (Dawkins 2006).Vertical transmission of culture involves children learningfrom their parents, a mode more congruent with geneticinheritance (Cavalli-Sforza 1981) Vertical transmissionstems from attachment between parents and offspring and

is predominant during infancy and early childhood (Bowlby

1973) The altriciality and close proximity of human infants

to their parents allows internal working models of culturaltraits to develop based on those of their parents (Hewlett

et al 2000) Among the Okiek, parents impart importantknowledge during this time, and Huntingford (1951) notesthat “up to the age when a child can be of some help to itsparents, both boys and girls are mainly with their mother,who teaches them the business of eating and living in a hut.She corrects childish bad habits and makes them familiarwith the ordinary customs and precautions of everyday lifethat have to be observed in Dorobo surroundings The fathercorrects improper behaviour towards himself and themother.” Vertical transmission is a low cost method ofacquiring culture for infants and young children and limitsinnovations while promoting cultural conservation (Cavalli-Sforza et al.1982) In stable environments vertical transmis-sion is expected to be highly adaptive, especially withinreproductively salient dimensions of culture, such as traitspromoting fertility, survival, and reproduction (Boyd andRicherson1985; Richerson and Boyd2005)

Oblique transmission involves social learning betweenindividuals of distinct generations or age groups typicallyfrom an older generation to a younger generation (Cavalli-Sforza 1981) Oblique transmission may occur within anextended kin group or local population Grandparents oraunts and uncles may pass on cultural variants tograndchildren or nieces and nephews; similarly, adults of alocal community may pass on cultural knowledge to

unrelated children Among the Ojibwa religious knowledge

is acquired obliquely, and “older people relate the tribal

tales, sing the songs and perform the religious rites, and the

children pick them up by association” (Burgesse 1944)

Oblique transmission can also occur between age grades of

children with adolescents transmitting cultural information

to younger children This mode of learning becomes more

common during middle childhood and may occur

bidirec-tionally as younger children and older children participate in

each other’s social learning (Harris and Corriveau 2011)

Culture change can occur rapidly when transmitted

obliquely, and in changing and stochastic environments,

oblique transmission is predicted to be highly adaptive as a

wider range of cultural variants may be available to adopt if

vertically acquired cultural traits may no longer be

success-ful in new ecological contexts (Boyd and Richerson1985;

Richerson and Boyd 2005) In subarctic North America

among the Chipewyans, acquiring sufficient subsistence

skills and learning the local geography necessitate taking

advantage of the experience of several older adults

Informants expressed, “it is generally the rule that a young

man will trap with some older relative for at least 4 or 5 years

before attempting to go out on his own This means that by

the time a man is in his early or middle twenties, he is

thoroughly familiar with at least one and probably more

trapping areas and is also skilled at other trapping activities”

(Van Stone1963)

There are multiple types of oblique transmission

Con-certed transmission involves a group of older individuals

formally or informally gaining consensus on the

transmis-sion of particular cultural variants (Cavalli-Sforza 1981;

Hewlett and Cavalli-Sforza1986) Concerted transmission

often occurs during initiation rituals and formal aspects of

cultural development, such as when Aranda elders pass on

the religious dimension of astronomical knowledge during

initiation; Maegraith (1932) explains that “when they grow

up and have undergone their ceremonial circumcision, they

are taught the ‘truth’ about the tribal legends and names

handed on to the boys The old men also instruct the initiated

boys in the movements, colour and brightness of the

stars .the knowledge is handed down by the old men to

the boys at their initiation, and is carefully concealed from

the women, who know practically nothing about the stars.”

Because a community of adults converge in agreement upon

the content of cultural transmission, the opportunity for

innovation in cultural variants that are concertedly

transmit-ted obliquely is expectransmit-ted to be difficult and infrequent

(Hewlett and Cavalli-Sforza 1986) Hence, the content of

concerted transmission is generally consistent within a

pop-ulation, often within the context of age and gender, and is

predicted to be highly conserved across generations and

cultural evolution (Cavalli-Sforza 1981; Hewlett and

Cavalli-Sforza1986)

Several types of model-based oblique transmissioninvolve differential transmission by specific types ofindividuals with specific qualities (Boyd and Richerson

1985; Richerson and Boyd 2005) Prestige-biased learning

is commonly discussed in the literature and involves ential social learning from models that receive freelyconferred deference from other members of the community(Chudek et al 2011) Prestigious individuals embodyconceptions of success within a cultural context, and humanspossess a psychological adaptation to prefer modeling thebehavior and skills of identified experts within culturaldomains (Henrich and Gil-White2001), such as in the case

prefer-of Aleut men acquiring the components prefer-of hunting skills;Shade (1948) relates that “the training of young men wasconducted by recognized experts in their fields: weatherforecasting, skin boat handling, marksmanship, and soforth Out of such a background grew an easily recognizablerespect for knowledge and authority.” Prestige-biasedlearning facilitates more accurate and rapid cultural trans-mission by streamlining the process of selecting potentialmodels for skill acquisition and differentially spreading themost successful information or skills across the group and toyounger generations (Henrich and Gil-White2001).Cultural transmission also occurs within an age group.Horizontal transmission involves social learning fromindividuals of the same generation, age group, or cohort,roughly within 4–5 years of age (Cavalli-Sforza1981) Hor-izontal transmission becomes more frequent during middlechildhood when children spend a majority of time in mixed-aged playgroups (Konner2010) Culture change can occurrapidly in domains that are primarily transmitted horizon-tally, and in changing environments, a reliance on horizontaltransmission can be highly adaptive (Boyd and Richerson

1985; Richerson and Boyd2005)

Multiple processes of social learning have been defined toexplain how culture is learned Teaching is one process ofsocial learning and multiple forms have been identifiedacross diverse taxa Caro and Hauser (1992) provide threecriteria for defining teaching Teaching involves, first, aknowledgeable individual modifying their behavior in thepresence of a naı¨ve individual; second, the knowledgeableindividual incurs some cost or derives no immediate benefit

by modifying their behavior; third, the naı¨ve individualacquires knowledge or skills more rapidly or efficientlythan they would have otherwise, or he or she acquiresknowledge or skills it would not have learned at all in theabsence of the knowledgeable individual’s modified behav-ior (Caro and Hauser1992) The roles of various forms ofteaching and their importance in traditional societies havebeen elaborately discussed Cultural anthropologists havehistorically downplayed the importance of teaching in tradi-tional societies (Lancy and Grove 2010; Tomasello

et al 1993); however, cognitive psychologists have

purported that teaching is a universal feature of human

psychology (Gergely and Csibra2006) Evolved

psycholog-ical mechanisms produce a type of learning described as

natural pedagogy, which involves social learning by

recog-nition of explicit cues of generalizable knowledge within a

given context (Csibra and Gergely2011; Gergely and Csibra

2006) These psychological mechanisms facilitate the

effi-cacy of both learning and teaching and increase the

capacities for social learning beyond those of observation

and imitation alone Teaching also involves guided

demon-stration, positive and negative reinforcement, verbal

expla-nation, and scaffolding (see Hewlett et al., Chap 3 this

volume; Konner 2010) One aspect of this contention,

concerning the frequency and importance of teaching,

stems from the operationalization and classification of

teach-ing While some authors have conceptualized teaching only

in the strict formal sense, others have suggested teaching is

multidimensional and methods of informal teaching are in

fact classifiable as teaching (Kruger and Tomasello1996)

Recently, significant work has moved this debate forward by

resolving discrepancies between approaches to define and

study teaching Klein (2015) provides a taxonomy of

teach-ing and links processes of teachteach-ing to cultural adaptation;

this framework predicts teaching to be highly frequent

cross-culturally A more comprehensive conception of teaching

reveals the importance of the social learning process in

traditional cultural settings (Hewlett et al.2011)

Imitation has been regarded as the dominant process of

acquiring cultural information Observation and imitation is

considered a requisite technique to ensure the reproduction

and transmission of cultural variants (Gergely and Csibra

2006) Observation and imitation can often occur

peripherally around teaching, yet represent a distinct process

of social learning Imitation, verbal instruction, and

prosociality have been suggested as the suite of

sociocognitive processes responsible for the cumulative

nature of human culture (Dean et al 2012) Observation

and imitation involves the learner directly observing some

skill or behavior and then attempting to replicate the

observed actions or behaviors Imitation is a widespread

process of social learning across many species; however,

only human children incorporate a dimension of sociality

when imitating actions For young children, unlike the

pro-cess of imitation documented among monkeys, imitation is

not purely utilitarian and self-serving but is a collaborative

process that develops social networks and potentially

incorporates horizontal transmission throughout the process

(Dean et al.2012) The ability and propensity to imitate are

deeply engrained in children’s psychology to the point that

children imitate unnecessary actions when attempting to

replicate behaviors to achieve a goal (Lyons et al.2007)

This overimitation has been found to be unique to humansand is the result of a highly developed sense of attributingcausality to a series of actions involved in task completion(Lyons et al.2007; however, see Berl and Hewlett2015forexceptions) Overimitation can be beneficial in allowing thechild to calibrate a specific action over time to more effi-ciently complete a given task; however, overimitation isinitially costly in that redundant unnecessary actions areweighted equally with essential actions (Lyons et al.2007).Investigating the nature of overimitation among children indiverse cultural settings remains an important aspect ofresearch on social learning Field studies among hunter-gatherers (Hewlett et al.2011) and reviews of ethnographicmaterials (MacDonald 2007) suggest that observation andimitation is the primary process of human social learning intraditional cultural settings

The nature of child development and demography inhunter-gatherer society indicates that over the course ofhuman evolutionary history, much of the social interactionthat occurs during childhood takes place in the context ofmixed-aged groups (Konner2010) The community of chil-dren in small kin-based societies provides ample opportunityfor collaborative learning experiences involving children ofall ages Collaborative learning consists of two learners ofapproximately equal skill, knowledge, and cognitive abilityresponding to a problem and co-constructing a solution(Konner 2010; Tomasello et al 1993) For example,among the Mbuti, “the children played house, learning thepatterns of cooperation that would be necessary for themlater in life They also learned the prime lesson of egality,other than for purposes of division of labor making nodistinction between male and female, this nuclear family orthat” (Turnbull1983) Collaborative learning often involvesacquiring sociocultural skills or information through play,practice, or adopting social roles among a group of childrenand requires children to consider the perspective of others(Hewlett and Boyette 2012; Hewlett et al 2011) In thisstudy collaborative learning was identified in the form ofchildren’s play, and we developed a distinction betweenplay, role-playing, and rule-based play from ethnographicaccounts

The local environment provides opportunities andlimitations for social learning, and both learners and teachersexploit the local ecology and materials to facilitate culturaltransmission Local enhancement involves a learner gainingknowledge or skills by being exposed to particular areas ofthe local environment by others Often this occurs uninten-tionally as a byproduct of daily life as young children areencouraged to accompany their parents or adults whileattending to various tasks (Konner 2010) Local enhance-ment requires direction, initiative, or intention on the part of

the transmitter or facilitator, but at the proximate level, local

enhancement may resemble individual learning as the child

is given the opportunity to learn directly from environmental

conditions (Heyes et al.2000; Konner2010) Local

enhance-ment may be unintentional; however, stimulus enhanceenhance-ment

involves the learner being directly given an object to

facili-tate learning about the use and manipulation of that object or

as a model for other objects Among the San stimulus

enhancement is used to instill practices of social exchange,

and Wiessner (1978) describes, “symbolic training to do

hxaro begins between the age of 6 months and a year when

the maternal or paternal grandmother cuts off a child’s

beads, washes him, puts the beads in the child’s hand, has

him give them to some older relative and replaces them with

new ones.” This process of learning also seems to be

espe-cially salient in the acquisition of subsistence skills as

parents and other adults often give children miniature

versions of important subsistence tools, such as bows and

arrows or traps (MacDonald2007)

These mechanisms of cultural transmission have been

proposed as features of the process of acquiring culture and

constitute aspects of an evolved culture acquisition device

(Brown 1991; Konner 2010; Tomasello et al 1993) By

systematically examining the modes and processes of

cul-tural transmission, a more fine-grained view of the process

of culture acquisition emerges and allows us to inquire about

specific aspects of social learning in hunter-gatherers

Field studies among hunter-gatherers provide

opportunities for systematic observational research on social

learning Egalitarian hunter-gatherers are populations

with-out strict social hierarchy, hereditary classes, or significant

wealth differences and live in ways socially more congruent

with the vast majority of human evolutionary history

(Boehm 1999) Investigating cultural transmission among

hunter-gatherers is one approach to infer ancestral patterns

of human social learning and also allows us to better

under-stand how groups of contemporary foragers pass on their

cultural knowledge Hewlett et al (2011) report on social

learning from behavioral observation data among Congo

basin egalitarian foragers and offer specific findings and

predictions concerning modes and developmental

parameters of cultural transmission Generally, social

learning occurs early in life, vertical transmission

characterizes early childhood, and horizontal and oblique

transmission become more dominant during middle

child-hood (Hewlett et al.2011) However, studies such as this

among hunter-gatherers are rare, despite a vast ethnographic

literature on hunter-gatherer lifeways

Other researchers have utilized the rich and detailed

ethnography of hunter-gatherers, which spans over

150 years, to investigate social learning and cultural

trans-mission MacDonald (2007) uses a comparative approach to

analyze the development of hunting skill in traditional

societies and identifies cross-cultural patterns that ize the transmission of hunting techniques with reference tothe parameters and predictions of life-history theory.MacDonald’s study provides a highly informative review

character-of the ethnographic descriptions character-of learning to hunt; ever, the process of selecting ethnographic sources and thesample of societies she reviews are not specified, and herstudy includes societies that utilize farming and other sub-sistence strategies

how-As MacDonald explains, models of human evolution and

of our species’ unique life-history strategy have emphasizedthe importance of large, difficult-to-acquire, packages ofhigh-quality animal protein (Kaplan et al.2000; MacDonald

2007) Therefore, understanding the process of learning tohunt may be generalizable to other domains of learning aswell MacDonald’s review suggests learning to hunt beginsvery young through vertical or oblique modes of transmis-sion and often involves stimulus enhancement, where olderindividuals provide children with miniature versions of toolsfor play and experimentation (MacDonald 2007) Adultsteach and guide children on the use of hunting tools insome contexts MacDonald (2007, p 390) notes that inseveral cases, “adults or older children provide huntingtools for the children to play with .and adults also offeradvice on the peculiarities of the weapons and how to usethem.” Providing hunting weapons to children allows for thedevelopment of important skills through play and also givesparents the opportunity to influence and direct children’s use

of these tools and hence the acquisition of subsistence-basedknowledge and skills through teaching (MacDonald2007).Additionally, hunters may target easier prey whenaccompanied by children to facilitate the demonstration ofproper technique (MacDonald2007) However, MacDonaldsuggests teaching and observation are infrequent processes

of acquiring hunting skill and learning to manufacture ing tools MacDonald suggests collaborative learning, groupplay, and stimulus enhancement are the dominant processes

hunt-of the development hunt-of hunting skill MacDonald emphasizesthe importance of the social context and kin relations amongmales and the transmission of hunting skills Clearly a num-ber of modes and processes are important in acquiring sub-sistence skills

Kruger and Tomasello (1996) provide a review of theethnography on social learning and identify three types ofcultural learning: imitative learning, instructed learning, andcollaborative learning These distinct processes of sociallearning are situated in a developmental context and aredependent upon degrees of comprehension and intentionalstates of the learner Imitative learning emerges early indevelopment, followed by instructed and collaborativelearning (Kruger and Tomasello 1996) Through theirreview of ethnographic materials, Kruger and Tomasellofurther define three types of intentional instruction They

conclude that expected learning, which involves a laissez

faire approach where children learn information or skills on

their own accord, occurs throughout development and is

employed for simple or relatively unimportant tasks; guided

learning occurs when adults believe children need assistance

to acquire knowledge or skills and is used when tasks are

moderately complex and often involves adults scaffolding

children’s learning; designed learning is a more formal

pro-cess of instruction and occurs when children are perceived to

need insistent and direct instruction and is reserved for

complex or highly valued cultural tasks, such as sitting or

walking early on and subsistence skills across development

(Kruger and Tomasello 1996) Kruger and Tomasello

predicted that all human societies demonstrate intentional

teaching of children and surveyed ethnographic materials of

a range of cultures including foragers, chiefdoms, and

state-level societies Their review provides important evidence

that many diverse cultures engage in intentional instruction

at least to some degree; however, their study is limited in

that the ethnographic materials reviewed and the process of

selecting their sample of cultures are not specified and not

developed in a systematic manner (Kruger and Tomasello

1996)

Our study is distinct from the previous comparative

research on cultural transmission in that we draw on a

specific sample of the ethnographic record by relying

exclusively on the eHRAF In doing so we avoid

researcher-introduced biases from nonsystematic sampling

of cultures Additionally, we restrict our analyses to

hunter-gatherers to best characterize social learning

among populations that subsist in ways more congruent

with the majority of human evolutionary history The

eHRAF does not provide a complete or perfect sample of

hunter-gatherers, but by limiting our searches to this data

set, we avoid suppressing evidence or selecting

ethno-graphic cases that would tend to support one theoretical

perspective over another Furthermore, the eHRAF has

subject-coded ethnographic texts providing additional

safeguards against biases in the collection of our target

ethnographic data By relying on the eHRAF, we are able

to be confident that all ethnographic materials derive from

valid and reliable sources with the vast majority produced

by trained social anthropologists or ethnographers This

study is the first systematic analysis of social learning

among hunter-gatherers designed to provide results useful

in the mainstream approach to social learning in

evolution-ary anthropological studies today

Currently the eHRAF database contains ethnographic

infor-mation on over 280 cultures The content of the eHRAF is

subject coded at the paragraph level using the Outline of

Cultural Materials (OCM) coding scheme Our search waslimited to 46 cultures with the eHRAF subsistence designa-tion ofhunter-gatherers Three OCM codes were used in anadvanced search to extract ethnographic information oncultural transmission: 867Transmission of Cultural Norms,

868Transmission of Skills, and 869 Transmission of Beliefs

We focus on egalitarian social structures Equestrian gatherers of the North American plains and complex hunter-gatherers of the North American Pacific Northwest wereexcluded from data collection This allows for more validcomparisons among hunter-gatherers between culturesand regions Our search (after exclusions) generated

hunter-982 paragraphs in 153 documents from our final sample of

23 hunter-gatherer populations.1Ethnographic information was only extracted and recorded

if the ethnographer explicitly provided either context or tent of social learning All extracted texts contained informa-tion suitable for classification into a cultural domain and aspecific process of cultural transmission (e.g., teaching, obser-vation and imitation); however, in many cases, the mode oftransmission (e.g., vertical, oblique) was not clear Ethno-graphic texts can be classified as cases or cultural models.Cases are instances where the ethnographer describes anobserved action or event involving specific individuals at aspecific time Cultural models are ethnographic descriptions

con-of social values, norms, or standards that the ethnographermay infer based on their expertise or may be related from one

or more local informants Cases and cultural models providevaluable and viable ethnographic material and both types oftextual information are used in this analysis Overly generalstatements regarding cultural acquisition or learning weredisregarded Cultural models that were purely based onmyths or fables were not included Extracted texts wererequired to have at least a brief statement concerning whatcultural information was transmitted Data collectionprocedures produced 146 ethnographic texts (14.8 % of totaltexts generated by search) suitable for coding and analysis.Ethnographic texts were coded for each instance of cul-tural transmission An individual text may yield multiplecodes Codes were first classified by cultural domain andthen coded for both mode of transmission and process oftransmission Table2.1lists operational definitions used incoding ethnographic texts Cultural domains were deter-mined post hoc from collected ethnographic texts Addition-ally, each code includes a measure of the age of the learnercoded asinfancy, early childhood, middle childhood, ado-lescence, childhood (general), and nonspecific The sex of

1 Our sample includes the Okiek, San, and Mbuti from Africa; the Ainu, Andaman, Vedda, and Semang from Asia; the Aleut, Chipewyan, Copper Inuit, Innu, Kaska, Ojibwa, Mi ’qmak, and Northern Paiute from North America; and the Aranda, Tiwi, Abipo´n, Siriono´, Warao, Bororo, Ona, and Yaghan from South America.

the learner was also coded asmale; female; both, for cases

that mention each sex; andgeneral, for statements that apply

to children generally without specific mention of either sex

Two coauthors (ZG, MG) independently coded the

146 texts, and a third coauthor (BH) coded a sample of

half of the texts and easily resolved the few coding

discrepancies to reach unanimous consensus.Collaborative

learning rule-based play was not used in the final coding

results because it rarely occurred

We have employed two methods of evaluating these data.One approach is to simply look at the frequency of uniquedomain mode process combinations for each culture, ratherthan the full set of generated codes This allowed us tocharacterize and compare cultures more so than the ethnog-raphy of those cultures Given the amount of ethnographicmaterials available for each culture varies, this processpartially avoids biases in the quantity of ethnographicmaterials For example, Lorna Marshall (1957) describes

Table 2.1 Operational definitions of coding scheme

Domains

Subsistence skills and knowledge Knowledge or skills related to food acquisition, includes hunting, gathering, food processing, production

and use of subsistence-related tools, knowledge of edible plants and animals Religious beliefs and practices Knowledge or skills related to the spiritual, religious, or supernatural domain, includes folk mythology,

ritual training, and initiation dealing with the supernatural Language Speaking skills, vocabulary, grammar, and other features of language acquisition

Ecology Knowledge or skills concerning the physical environment, including nonedible plants, ethnobotany,

medicinal plants, astronomy (non-spiritual, e.g., navigation, naming constellations), weather patterns, geographical knowledge

Miscellaneous skills Knowledge or skills related to general locomotion, basic operation of crafts (e.g., canoes), swimming,

basic climbing, dancing, singing, basic tool use (not directly tied to subsistence, or manufacture), alloparenting, toilet training, and some domestic skills (not directly related to subsistence, e.g., sewing) Manufacture (non-subsistence) Knowledge or skills involving production of useful items, including watercrafts, other transportation

crafts, craft manufacture such as basketry, textile manufacture, tool manufacture, and building dwellings Cultural values and kinship Knowledge or skills concerning culturally preferred social behavior, including gender roles, morality,

social norms (e.g., sharing, generosity), proper behavior between kin, kin terms, age-graded social distinctions, emotional behavior, and culturally preferred conduct

Modes

Horizontal Learning from individuals of the same generation, age group, or cohort within approximately 5 years of

age (e.g., children–children, adult–adult) Oblique Social learning between individuals of distinct generations or age groups (e.g., uncle to nephew, adult to

child, adolescents to young children) Oblique–prestige bias Social learning from a culturally identified expert to member(s) of a different generation or age group Oblique concerted Several adults agree upon what should be transmitted to an individual (usually in initiation context) Vertical Children learning from their parents

Unknown The context was not specific enough to justify coding, but some information of a domain and a process was

mentioned Processes

Collaborative learning Individuals of approximately equal age, skill, knowledge, and cognitive ability collectively contribute to

the learning of a specific skill or knowledge Collaborative learning play Type of collaborative learning that involves the transmission, acquisition, or practice of cultural

knowledge or skills through informal play or miscellaneous games Collaborative learning, role-playing Type of collaborative learning that involves individuals of similar age collectively playing social roles

(e.g., play house, husband-wife) Local enhancement The learner gains knowledge or skills by interacting with the local environment because other individuals

expose the learner to the setting or environment (e.g., parents take children gathering or walk through forest)

Stimulus enhancement The learner is given an object to facilitate learning how to use the object

Observation and imitation The learner directly observes some skill or behavior and attempts to replicate the observed actions or

behaviors Teaching An individual modifies his or her behavior specifically to impart knowledge, skills, or behaviors, to a

learner, but there is insufficient information to code as demonstration or storytelling Teaching–demonstration Type of teaching where an individual demonstrates knowledge, skills, or behaviors, to a learner, and may

offer feedback and examples during the process Teaching–storytelling Type of teaching where an individual actively imparts specific (within one of the defined domains)

knowledge, skills, or behaviors to a learner by verbal communication of stories or metaphors Individual learning Individual exhibits repeated attempts to learn a skill or develop new skills or knowledge on his or her own.

Includes trial and error and individual practice

the processes of learning subsistence skills among the San

noting that “the adults do not let their children out of their

sight .the adults pause to show them how to hold a digging

stick, or a toy bow or drill, so that play and learning merge.”

The following statements yield a code ofsubsistence skills

and knowledge—teaching–demonstration—oblique A

sim-ilar code is generated from Richard Lee’s (1979) description

noting that “around age 12 a boy starts accompanying his

father, uncles, or older brothers on hunts .the boy becomes

more active in shooting, with mongeese, genets, hares, and

game birds as the main targets; during the winter months the

young adolescent boy also builds snarelines, often under the

guidance of his father or grandfather.” These two

ethno-graphic texts would only contribute to one count of the

subsistence skills and

knowledge—teaching–demonstra-tion—oblique permutation; however, other codes may

stem from each of these texts All reported frequency data

was produced from this version of the data, which used only

uniquedomain mode process combinations for each culture,

ignoring age or sex distinctions Results concerning

devel-opmental patterns or sex biases rely on the full set of

generated codes

An important dimension of the eHRAF is the classification

and evaluation of source ethnographies This sample of

ethnographic texts stems from 77 unique documents

cover-ing 23 huntcover-ing and gathercover-ing cultures These documents

were primarily authored by ethnographers or social

anthropologists (62, constituting 80 %), with the remaining

authored by other social scientists or professionals

Frequency data can be evaluated across the entire sample

or within each cultural domain Due to variation in the graphic materials of each culture in the eHRAF, certaincultures or regions are overrepresented in this sample In thefrequency data, 30 % of the codes stemmed from eight NorthAmerican societies, 26 % of codes came from three Africansocieties, 13.3 % of codes came from two societies fromOceania, and 10 % of codes were from four Asian societies.Results in Table2.2reveal certain domains were more com-monly discussed than others The subsistence skills andknowledge domain was the most common and accounted for37.6 % of all frequency codes Thecultural values and kin-ship domain accounted for 16.5 % of the distributionfollowed by the religious beliefs and practices domainwhich accounted for 13.8 % Themanufacturing and miscel-laneous skills domains accounted for 12.8 % and 11.5 % ofthe frequency data, respectively The ecology domainaccounted for 6.4 % and thelanguage domain for 1 %.Across the entire sample, the frequencies of vertical andoblique transmission were the most common and appear atsimilar rates (37 % and 34 %, see Table2.1column totals)

ethno-If the subcategories ofoblique (prestige bias, concerted) areadded to the more general oblique classification, obliquebecomes the most frequent mode of transmission (43 %).Only three instances (3.2 %) of oblique codes describedyoung children learning socially from adolescents, and twocultural models (2.1 %) mentioned young children learnedfrom adolescents or elders Therefore, the vast majority(95 %) ofoblique codes concern children’s social learningfrom adults.Horizontal transmission accounted for 10 % ofthe frequency data

The frequency data of processes of cultural transmission

in Table 2.3 highlight the importance of teaching in the

Table 2.2 Prevalence of modes of transmission (with number of cases in parentheses) by cultural domain

3.7 % (3)

01.2 % (1)

8.5 % (7)

82 cases Religious beliefs and practices 23.3 %

(7)

6.7 % (2)

36.7 % (11)

23.3 % (7)

7.1 % (1)

14.3 % (2)

14 cases Miscellaneous skills 16 %

(4)

12 % (3)

36 % (9)

8 % (2)

4 % (1)

24 % (6)

25 cases Manufacture (non-subsistence) 57.1 %

(16)

7.1 % (2)

28.6 % (8)

(1)

3.6 % (1)

28 cases Cultural values and kinship 36.1 %

(13)

8.3 % (3)

41.7 % (15)

5.6 % (2)

34 % (75)

7 % (15)

2 % (4)

10 % (22)