Cultural evolution articles from across Nature Portfolio

Birdsong contains strings of syllables and is essential for their communication. Using a new song decoder to annotates song in a quasi-real-time manner, and rewarding specific syllable sequences, this study shows Bengalese finches can flexibly modify the content of their song in a goal-directed way.

A detailed analysis of male song structure in zebra finches shows how females use particular features of songs as indicators of male quality in species that learn only one song.

Although we have been able to track how cultural innovations spread among farming populations in prehistoric Europe, we know relatively little about this among European hunter-gatherers. Dolbunova et al. use a range of techniques to shed light on how the making and use of pottery spread among early-to-mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers west of the Urals.

Undoubtedly our technology surpasses anything seen in nonhumans, but is this the result of individual genius or collective learning?

A study finds that social norms have become weaker in the United States over the past 200 years. The changing strength of norms is linked to fluctuations in societal levels of innovation and risky behaviour.

A study in Cell challenges the existing notion of the evolution of FOXP2 as a human-specific language gene.