Complex teaching and tools ‘evolved together’

The human ability to teach and our use of complex tools may have evolved together, according to new research.

The improvement of technologies across generations, known as “cumulative cultural evolution”, is critical to our success as a species, but its origins are a mystery.

The new study, conducted by the University of Exeter, tested the power of teaching on developing simple and more complex tools and found that teaching stands out when tackling complicated problems.

This suggests that as early humans developed more complex tools, natural selection began to favor those who could teach.

“Humans have an unparalleled ability to pass knowledge down from generation to generation,” said senior author Dr. Alex Thornton, of the Center for Ecology and Conservation at Penryn Campus in Exeter in Cornwall.

Traditional theories assumed that cumulative cultural evolution required specialized processes, such as teaching, to convey information accurately, but this cannot explain why these processes evolved in the first place.

“Our aim in this study was to test the hypothesis that these processes gradually ‘co-evolved’ with an increasing dependence on complex tools.”

More than 600 people took part in the study, forming “chains” to develop a simple tool (a waterproof paper boat) or a more complex one (a basket of pipe cleaners).

All tools were used to transport the marbles, successfully measured by the number of marbles carried.

The development chain involved ten “generations”: ten versions of the tool under development.

Each participant saw the tool made by the previous person in the chain, watched the previous person make the tool (and could then imitate and learn from them) or talked to the previous participant, allowing the teaching.

“Simple and complex tools have generally improved over the” generations “and for simple tools this improvement was more or less the same in all three study conditions,” said Dr Amanda Lucas, from University of Exeter.

“With complex tools, teaching has consistently led to greater improvements than other conditions.

“The teaching appeared to be particularly useful in enabling the transmission of new, high-performance designs.”

Dr Lucas added: ‘We are incredibly grateful to the local community groups across Cornwall who have taken part in the research, including women’s institutes, sports clubs, craft companies, museums, theaters, galleries, libraries and community gardeners.

“This meant that our study represented a diversity of ages, backgrounds and abilities, which is important as many of these types of experiments, which intend to investigate something essential about being human, only recruit a smaller sample of college students. “.

Dr Alex Thornton continued: “The effects we have seen have been gradual, but the idea here was to look at the origins of cumulative cultural evolution and over many generations these gradual improvements would add up.

“Our findings indicate an evolutionary feedback loop between toolmaking and teaching.

“This suggests that our ancestors could have started making modest cumulative improvements to simple tools without the need to teach, but as the tools became more complex, teaching started to become beneficial.

“The evolution of better teaching skills would in turn allow the production of even more complex and effective tools.”

The study also found that simple tools tended to “converge” towards a common design, while complex tools remained diverse and different, reflecting the diversity of technologies in today’s human societies.

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The research team included collaborators from the University of Stirling and King’s College London and the study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

The document, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is titled: “The value of teaching increases with the complexity of the tools in cumulative cultural evolution.”