Skip to content

Research at St Andrews

University > Research portal > Research publications > Experimental evidence for the co-evolution of hominin tool-m...

Experimental evidence for the co-evolution of hominin tool-making teaching and language

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

DOI

Open Access permissions

Open

Links

Author(s)

T. J. H. Morgan, N. T. Uomini, L. E. Rendell, L. Chouinard-Thuly, S. E. Street, H. M. Lewis, C. P. Cross, C. Evans, R. Kearney, I. de la Torre, A. Whiten, K. N. Laland

School/Research organisations

Abstract

Hominin reliance on Oldowan stone tools—which appear from 2.5 mya and are believed to have been socially transmitted—has been hypothesized to have led to the evolution of teaching and language. Here we present an experiment investigating the efficacy of transmission of Oldowan tool-making skills along chains of adult human participants (N=184) using five different transmission mechanisms. Across six measures, transmission improves with teaching, and particularly with language, but not with imitation or emulation. Our results support the hypothesis that hominin reliance on stone tool-making generated selection for teaching and language, and imply that (i) low-fidelity social transmission, such as imitation/emulation, may have contributed to the ~700,000 year stasis of the Oldowan technocomplex, and (ii) teaching or proto-language may have been pre-requisites for the appearance of Acheulean technology. This work supports a gradual evolution of language, with simple symbolic communication preceding behavioural modernity by hundreds of thousands of years.
Close
More...

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number6029
Number of pages8
JournalNature Communications
Volume6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Jan 2015

    Research areas

  • Tool-use, Human evolution, Social transmission, Language evolution

Discover related content
Find related publications, people, projects and more using interactive charts.

View graph of relations

Related by author

  1. The reach of gene-culture coevolution in animals

    Whitehead, H., Laland, K. N., Rendell, L., Thorogood, R. & Whiten, A., 3 Jun 2019, In: Nature Communications. 10, 10 p., 2405.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

  2. Flexible learning, rather than inveterate innovation or copying, drives cumulative knowledge gain

    Miu, E., Gulley, N., Laland, K. N. & Rendell, L., 5 Jun 2020, In: Science Advances. 6, 23, 10 p., eaaz0286.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  3. Social transmission favours the ‘morally good’ over the ‘merely arousing’

    Stubbersfield, J. M., Dean, L. G., Sheikh, S., Laland, K. N. & Cross, C. P., 4 Jun 2019, In: Palgrave Communications. 5, 11 p., 3.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  4. Animal cultures matter for conservation

    Brakes, P., Dall, S. R. X., Aplin, L. M., Bearhop, S., Carroll, E. L., Ciucci, P., Fishlock, V., Ford, J. K. B., Garland, E. C., Keith, S. A., McGregor, P. K., Mesnick, S. L., Noad, M. J., Notarbartolo di Sciara, G., Robbins, M. M., Simmonds, M. P., Spina, F., Thornton, A., Wade, P. R., Whiting, M. J. & 5 others, Williams, J., Rendell, L., Whitehead, H., Whiten, A. & Rutz, C., 8 Mar 2019, In: Science. 363, 6431, p. 1032-1034 5 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  5. Evolutionary approaches to human behaviour

    Brown, G. R., Cross, C. P. & Laland, K. N., 2019, (Accepted/In press) The Behaviour of Animals: Mechanisms, Function and Evolution; 2nd Edition; Ed. J. Bolhuis, J. Hogan and T. Piersma.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Related by journal

  1. Nature Communications (Journal)

    Ife Okafor-Yarwood (Reviewer)

    23 Mar 2020

    Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Peer review of manuscripts

  2. Nature Communications (Journal)

    Andy Gardner (Reviewer)

    Feb 2018

    Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Peer review of manuscripts

Related by journal

  1. Rapid parallel adaptation despite gene flow in silent crickets

    Zhang, X., Rayner, J. G., Blaxter, M. & Bailey, N. W., 4 Jan 2021, In: Nature Communications. 12, 15 p., 50.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  2. "Gene accordions" cause genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity in clonal populations of Staphylococcus aureus

    Belikova, D., Jochim, A., Power, J., Holden, M. T. G. & Heilbronner, S., 14 Jul 2020, In: Nature Communications. 11, 15 p., 3526.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  3. 245 MHz bandwidth organic light-emitting diodes used in a gigabit optical wireless data link

    Yoshida, K., Manousiadis, P., Bian, R., Chen, Z., Murawski, C., Gather, M. C., Haas, H., Turnbull, G. A. & Samuel, I. D. W., 3 Mar 2020, In: Nature Communications. 11, 7 p., 1171.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  4. A fluoride-responsive genetic circuit enables in vivo biofluorination in engineered Pseudomonas putida

    Calero, P., Volke, D. C., Lowe, P., Gotfredsen, C. H., O'Hagan, D. & Nikel, P. I., 7 Oct 2020, In: Nature Communications. 11, 11 p., 5045.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  5. A substrateless, flexible, and water-resistant organic light-emitting diode

    Keum, C., Murawski, C., Archer, E., Kwon, S., Mischok, A. & Gather, M. C., 7 Dec 2020, In: Nature Communications. 11, 9 p., 6250 .

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

ID: 168639052

Top