Table 1 Different modes of cultural transmission and convergence (from Eerkens et al. 2006; Mesoudi 2011; McGhee 2018)
Cultural transmission | Guided variation | Trait transmitted from a social convention to an individual who will experiment to optimize the state/attribute |
|---|---|---|
Conformism | Trait composed of a state/attribute picked up by an individual based on its high frequency in the social pool | |
Indirect bias | Trait composed of a state/attribute picked up as part of a package of different traits from the social pool | |
Convergence | Nonparallel | Independent emergence of a trait that derives from a single inherited archaic trait |
Parallel | Independent emergence of a trait that derives from several inherited variants | |
Reverse evolution | A derived trait that reverses back to an anterior state |