From epic poetry to game shows, from Stone Age axes to spaceflight, humans have the most complex cultures of any species on Earth. Since the time of Darwin, scientists have suspected that this culture ...

In Part One of this series, we saw that culture doesn't suffer from the problem that Darwin's theory of natural selection successfully solved: the problem of how change accumulates in biological ...

Think of evolution, and you might think of Darwin's finches and natural selection. But according to researchers writing in the journal BioScience, it is not our genes that are determining our current ...

A new study tests the hypothesis that the consumption of the mind-altering beverage kava facilitated the emergence of complex ...

The authors shift each Natural Geographic Area’s (NGA) time series with respect to a single anchor time, so that all 23 NGAs can be visualized at once. The first principle component, denoted by SPC1 ...

Human evolution has often been depicted as a process of adaptation, where natural selection and genetic changes drive species toward better-suited traits for survival in their environments. But this ...

Human evolution may no longer be driven primarily by genetics, according to a new theory by researchers at the University of Maine which claims that cultural systems are now shaping the way humans ...

Human culture has evolved to allow humans to extract resources and helped us expand to dominate the biosphere. But the same evolutionary processes may counteract efforts to solve new global ...

Common pool resources comprise around 65 percent of Earth's surface and vast tracts of the ocean. While examples of successful governance of these resources exist, the circumstances and mechanisms ...

Central features of human evolution may stop our species from resolving global environmental problems like climate change, says a recent study led by the University of Maine. Humans have come to ...