Population size and cultural evolution in nonindustrial food-producing societies

PLoS One. 2013 Sep 12;8(9):e72628. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0072628. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

Modeling work suggests that population size affects cultural evolution such that larger populations can be expected to have richer and more complex cultural repertoires than smaller populations. Empirical tests of this hypothesis, however, have yielded conflicting results. Here, we report a study in which we investigated whether the subsistence toolkits of small-scale food-producers are influenced by population size in the manner the hypothesis predicts. We applied simple linear and standard multiple regression analysis to data from 40 nonindustrial farming and pastoralist groups to test the hypothesis. Results were consistent with predictions of the hypothesis: both the richness and the complexity of the toolkits of the food-producers were positively and significantly influenced by population size in the simple linear regression analyses. The multiple regression analyses demonstrated that these relationships are independent of the effects of risk of resource failure, which is the other main factor that has been found to influence toolkit richness and complexity in nonindustrial groups. Thus, our study strongly suggests that population size influences cultural evolution in nonindustrial food-producing populations.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cultural Evolution*
  • Humans
  • Population Density
  • Regression Analysis

Grants and funding

MC is supported by the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and Simon Fraser University. AR’s work on the study was supported by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master’s Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. BB is supported by the University of Missouri, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and Simon Fraser University. The opinions expressed in this research are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding bodies. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.