Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...

Biological evolution adheres to the conditions for natural selection sufficiently well that it serves as a useful approximation, but cultural evolution does not. A model that captures the skeletal ...

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 ...

Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the only one that paints self-portraits, walks on the Moon and worships gods? For decades, many scholars have argued that the difference stems ...

Potters of different cultural backgrounds learn new types differently, producing cultural differences even in the absence of differential cultural evolution. The research has implications for how we ...

Culture is central to defining humanity. Throughout history, many definitions have been proposed to describe what we mean when we talk about culture, leading to considerable confusion. But while ...

Eli Elster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...