Cultural Transmission (Evolutionary Biology)

Resumen. Desde la apertura comercial las importaciones de frijol en México se han incremen-tado y la producción disminuido. En este artículo se presenta el efecto de las políticas públicas de libre mercado, de precios y de extensionismo rural en la situación actual de la organización de productores de frijol en la zona de Rio Grande, Zacatecas. Para ello se realizaron entrevistas se-miestructuradas a actores clave de la región durante el año 2017, además de recorridos en la zona. Se encontró que las organizaciones formales de productores de frijol en realidad no operan, y los productores incursionan de forma individual en un ambiente de libre oferta y demanda que los coloca en una situación vulnerable ante los intermediarios. Las políticas y programas implemen-tados han complicado la consolidación de auténticas organizaciones de productores que participen en la cadena de valor. Se propone que la implementación de una política integral con énfasis en el consumo fomentará la producción, organización y comercialización en torno al frijol.

Palabras clave: Políticas públicas, frijol, organización de productores.

We explore contemporary evolutionary perspectives on children’s psychological development, questioning the view that high-fidelity, inter-individual transmission of information explains the cumulative character of human cultures, and children’s ontogenesis within these cultures. We argue that humans construct an environmental niche that is unique in being composed of institutions, which function to coordinate activity over multiple time scales. Institutions involve not simply customs or conventions but a deontology of future-binding rights, responsibilities, duties, and obligations. The origins of institutions can be traced in hominin evolution to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, where kinship, the first institution, made possible community support of an extended and demanding form of ontogenesis. Since the human environmental niche is an institutional reality, children today need to acquire the ability to understand and act effectively within institutions. We propose that this ability emerges not as an adaptation solely to past conditions but through differentiation and reintegration of an ‘extended ontogenetic system’ of which the child is a constituent, leading to a quality of self-consciousness on the part of the child that makes possible the ability to live in an institutional reality.

BACKGROUND:
In spite of its indusrial usefulness and varied daily uses, lead (Pb) pollution is a widespread ecological problem that faces the humans in the 21th century. Pb was found to produces a wide range of toxic effects including neurotoxicity especially to the developing and young offspring. Recently, the utilization of herbal plants has received a significant attention where there has been rising awareness in their therapeutic use; among these is the garlic.
AIM OF THE WORK:
In light of the above, the current study is designed experimentally in female pregnant rats in order to investigate the beneficial role of garlic extract in the protection from the maternal and fetal cerebellar damage that produced by administration of different doses of Pb during pregnancy.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Positively pregnant female rats were divided into five groups; one control group, two Pb-treated groups (exposed to 160 and 320 mg/kg b.wt. of Pb, respectively) and two groups treated with both Pb and garlic (exposed to Pb as previous groups together with 250 mg/ kg b.wt. /day of garlic extract). Treatments started from day 1 till day 20 of pregnancy, where the mother rats of different experimental groups were sacrified to obtain the fetuses. Pb level in the maternal nd fetal blood and cerebellum was estimated by spectrophotometry. Specimens of the cerebellum of different mother and fetal groups were processed to histological and immunohistochemical staining for microscopic examination.
RESULTS:
The results showed that administration of Pb to pregnant rats resulted in a dose-dependent toxicity for both mothers and fetuses in the form of decrease of maternal weight gain, placental and fetal weights, brain weight and diminished fetal growth parameters, which were prominent in rat's group treated with larger dose of Pb. In Pb-treated rats, Pb level in blood and cerebellum was high when compared to the control. The histopathological examination of the cerebellum of treated dams and fetuses showed marked alterations mainly in the form of Purkinje cell degeneration and lack of deveopmet of fetal cerebellum. Co-treatment of garlic extract along with Pb resulted in a significant decrease in Pb levels as compared with those treated with Pb alone with improvement of the histopathological changes.
CONCLUSIONS:
This study was useful in evaluating the hazardous effects of uncontrolled use of Pb in general and in assessing the developmental and neurotoxicity of fetuses due to exposure during pregnancy in particular. Co-administration of garlic has beneficial effects in amelioration of Pb-induced neurotoxicity and reversing the histopathological changes of the cerebellum of mother rats and fetuses.
KEYWORDS:
garlic; glial fibrillary acidic protein; lead; purkinje cells

Stefano Zenni
Conservatorio di Bologna e New York University

Conferenza con ascolti musicali
Lunedì 12 marzo, ore 14:30 Auditorium (U12), via Vizzola 5

Abstract
Il jazz è una musica nata ed evolutasi per effetto dalle migrazioni: di individui (schiavi e liberi), strumenti, stili, idee, libri, supporti tecnologici. Musica geografica, di comunità e culture che si spostano da un continente all'altro o da un quartiere all'altro di una città. La geografia e lo studio delle diaspore ci consentono di comprendere più a fondo le origini molteplici del jazz e le dinamiche che ne hanno consentito una diffusione globale. Con l'ausilio di mappe, cartine e numerosi ascolti, Stefano Zenni ci introduce ad una nuova visione globale del jazz.

Discussant:
Fulvio Carmagnola, Università di Milano Bicocca
Paolo Manasse, Università di Bologna

La conferenza inaugura il progetto CISEPS “La diffusione dei tratti culturali”, che mira a innescare dibattiti interdisciplinari mettendo in evidenza problemi comuni e specificità tra economia, filosofia, antropologia, geografia, storia, biologia e molti altri campi. Pensare in termini di tratti culturali -­‐ caratteristiche che dipendono in qualche misura dall’apprendimento sociale -­‐ non significa voler esaurire i processi culturali, bensì pensare in modo critico modelli e metafore scientifiche per studiare la cultura.
Per saperne di più: [email protected]

CISEPS
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[email protected]

Cubic dice were brought by the Romans to the Low Countries, and are found in small numbers at many archaeological sites dating to the last 2000 years. We report on a systematic analysis of 110 well-dated dice from the Netherlands, showing that shape, pip confi guration, and pip style changed signifi cantly for bone and antler dice from the Roman to the recent historical period. Dice predating 650 CE are highly variable in all attributes, those dating between 1100 and 1450 are highly standardized, and those post-dating 1450 CE are standardized for some attributes, such as symmetry and confi guration, but variable for others, such as material type. There is also a major shift from “sevens” to “primes” and back to “sevens” pip confi guration across these temporal windows, and pip style was simplifi ed over time from a dot-ring-ring pattern to simple dots. We compare these trends to a smaller set of well-dated dice from the United Kingdom and speculate on possible reasons for these chan...

A mechanism of evolution that ensures adaptive changes without the obligatory role of natural selection is described. According to this mechanism, the first event is a plastic adaptive change (change of phenotype), followed by stochastic genetic change which makes the transformation irreversible. This mechanism is similar to the organic selection mechanism as proposed by Baldwin, Lloyd Morgan and Osborn in the 1890s and later developed by Waddington, but considerably updated according to contemporary knowledge to demonstrate its independence from natural selection. Conversely, in the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the first event is random genetic change, followed by a new phenotype and natural selection or differential reproduction of genotypes. Due to the role of semiosis in the decisive first step of the mechanism described here (the ontogenic adaptation, or rearrangement of gene expression patterns and profile), it could be called a semiotic mechanism of evolution.

Using cultural transmission (CT) models, I predicted a shift towards more restricted household learning in a wide range of technologies, not simply the prestige items typically associated with the emergence of peer-elite exchange networks during the Marpole period (2400-1000 BP). According to CT models, restricted access to technical knowledge should result in decreased stylistic and fine-scale metric variation through time in craft traditions. The presence of such a reduction in variation in formal stone tool technologies over time serves as evidence of a shift in learning practices having occurred in concert with the emergence of hereditary inequality. High resolution analyses of formed lithic tools from previously excavated archaeological collections was conducted to examine fine scale stylistic and metric variation in assemblages in sites throughout the Salish Sea. In addition, I also examined the impacts of additional factors on variation often not considered in CT research suc...

The people of Kiribati play a broad assortment of card and board games. The game rules show several innovations that were made outside the purview of the games’
manufacturers. The presence and regional development of proprietary board games illustrates product development scenarios that are counterintuitive to marketers. Using game boards and game rules collected in Kiribati, this study offers an explanation on how game development in Micronesia can be understood using cultural transmission theory by locating the Republic of Kiribati both geographically and economically within the Pacific Islands economies and their communities and within their own anthropological context. The findings emphasize the importance of understanding regional and country-specific cultural practices when applying principles of product development, placement and distribution.

Kamares Ware is one of the most famous pottery styles in archaeology. Its shapes and creative decorations have been differentially studied in the past, mainly from a stylistic perspective. However, its complexity and the fragmented state of the Middle Minoan Cretan contexts have at times hindered our attempts to make sense of its horizontal and vertical dynamics of transmission. Publications accumulated in decades have produced descriptions of Kamares Ware pottery styles from various centres around Crete. These genealogies of pots illustrate continuity in both material forms and correlated practices that lasted for several generations. By looking at style from the perspective of Material Engagement Theory and radical enactive theories of cognition, I illustrate that the long-term development of the Knossian Kamares style describes something more than a succession of forms and decorations: a novel form of memory. Specifically, I argue that the Knossian Kamares style is a form of transgenerational memory continually re-created every time potters made new vessels in this style. Furthermore, by rethinking the notion of autobiographical memory from psychology and the cognitive sciences, I present for the first time the idea that transgenerational memory might also be productive of identity.

We’re losing our culture… our heritage… our traditions… everything is being swept away.

Such sentiments get echoed around the world, from aging Trump supporters in West Virginia to young villagers in West Africa. But what is triggering this sense of cultural loss, and to what ends does this rhetoric get deployed?

To answer these questions, anthropologist David Berliner travels around the world, from Guinea-Conakry, where globalization affects the traditional patriarchal structure of cultural transmission, to Laos, where foreign UNESCO experts have become self-appointed saviors of the nation’s cultural heritage. He also embarks on a voyage of critical self-exploration, reflecting on how anthropologists handle their own sense of cultural alienation while becoming deeply embedded in other cultures. This leads into a larger examination of how and why we experience exonostalgia, a longing for vanished cultural heydays we never directly experienced.

Losing Culture provides a nuanced analysis of these phenomena, addressing why intergenerational cultural transmission is vital to humans, yet also considering how efforts to preserve disappearing cultures are sometimes misguided or even reactionary. Blending anthropological theory with vivid case studies, this book teaches us how to appreciate the multitudes of different ways we might understand loss, memory, transmission, and heritage.

For much of recent human history, the "traditional" family has consisted of a mother, father, and their biological offspring. However, this definition does not encompass the extensive biocultural evolutionary development of the human family from the earliest hominin groups to the dynamic families seen in modern society. This research synthesizes and analyzes recent literature on the biological and sociocultural changes which have revolutionized what it means to be a family.

Abstract: Kamikazes and Cultural Evolution

Is cultural evolution needed to explain altruistic self-sacrifice?  Some contend that cultural traits (e.g. beliefs, behaviors, and for some “memes”) replicate according to selection processes that have “floated free” from biology.  One test case is the example of suicide kamikaze attacks in wartime Japan.  Standard biological mechanisms—such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection—might not seem to apply here: The suicide pilots did not act on the expectation that others would reciprocate, and they were supposedly sacrificing themselves for country and emperor, not close relatives.  Yet an examination of both the historical record and the demands of evolutionary theory suggest the kamikaze phenomenon does not cry out for explanation in terms of a special non-biological selection process.  This weakens the case for cultural evolution, and has interesting implications for our understanding of altruistic self-sacrifice.

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book summary in downloadable .doc]      Our instincts—for food, sex, or territorial protection— evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not in today’s world of densely populated cities, technological innovations, and pollution. We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects, from candy to pornography to atomic weapons—that gratify these gut instincts with often-dangerous results. Animal biologists coined the term “supernormal stimuli” to describe imitations that appeal to primitive instincts and exert a stronger pull than real things, such as soccer balls that geese prefer over eggs. Evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett applies this concept to the alarming disconnect between human instinct and our created environment, demonstrating how supernormal stimuli are a major cause of today’s most pressing problems, including obesity and war. However, Barrett does more than show how unfettered instincts fuel dangerous excesses. She also reminds us that by exercising self-control we can rein them in, potentially saving ourselves and civilization.

Abstract: Parent–offspring conflict theory hypothesizes that interests of  offspring and parents are asymmetrical in key contexts including the offspring’s mating strategies and mate preferences. Evidence supports this hypothesis and documents these asymmetries in humans. However, offspring in East Asia have mate preferences and mating strategies that are in significantly greater harmony with their parents’ preferences about their mating choices as compared with offspring elsewhere in the world. The paper hypothesizes that the Confucian virtue of filial piety (xiao 孝) was designed and  disseminated in order to benefit parents by enabling them successfully to extract more resources out of their offspring than is expected given either data from parent–offspring conflict theory or data from cross-cultural studies of mate preferences and mating strategies. The results of this project mark an early step in building a stable interdisciplinary platform from which to more accurately observe and appraise the unappreciated, awe-inspiring influence of Confucianism.

Erratum: la référence à Aarne et Thompson 1981 doit naturellement être remplacée par: Thompson, Stith. 1955–1958. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk-Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediæval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends I–VI. 2nd rev. edn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

This study applies phylogenetic software to motifs connected with the Pleiades as identified in Yuri Berezkin’s database, The Analytical Catalogue of World Mythology and Folklore. The aim of analysis is to determine which, if any, of the analysed motifs are likely to have spread in conjunction with the earliest migrations out of Africa and to the Americas. The Pleiades analysis is compared to an analysis of Orion motifs.

Previous research on helicopter history consists primarily of (auto)biographies and collections of helicopter patents. The first with its focus on individual achievements mostly denies contact between pioneers while the second largely ignores the limited use of patents by these pioneers. As a result the transmission of helicopter technology, particularly that of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, has been little understood.

"Where, O death, is your victory?"
Statistical reconstruction of earliest human beliefs related to death. It is not clear if modern man believed in an afterlife before the Out of Africa. This paper will show that a careful statistical analysis of a set of mythological motifs could usefully support the results of archaeology, by showing which were the most probable beliefs of the first Homo Sapiens.

Il est difficile de savoir si les hommes modernes croyaient en une vie après la mort avant la sortie d'Afrique. Il sera ici montré qu'une analyse statistique des mythes peut utilement seconder les résultats de l'archéologie, en montrant qu'elles étaient les croyances les plus probables des premiers Homo Sapiens.

The image of a figure holding two wild animals, often called the "Mistress/Master of Animals", has appeared across many ancient periods and regions, on artifacts from proto-literate Mesopotamia in the Near East to the Aegean Iron Age. This motif has a demonstrable chain of cultural custody that is closely tied to concepts of both divinity and royalty. Rather than following a linear progression of diffusion with consistent interpretation, the Master/Mistress motif is culturally translated by adopting populations to suit the understandings of the individuals within those populations. Though some concepts such as healing remained constant from culture to culture, the symbol was reinterpreted or modified based on the role it played in adopting populations' cultural schemas. This resulted in the two seemingly separate motifs of the "Master" and "Mistress". This translation demonstrates the close relationship these early cultures had to one another in spite of their perceived distinctness.

A Memética é, então, a ciência que estuda como memes se propagam. O que a genética faz com os genes, a Memética faz com os memes. Ou, mais precisamente, o que a genética de populações e a epidemiologia fazem com as informações genéticas, a Memética faz com as informações culturais. O ponto a ser discutido então é apenas se os modelos matemáticos aplicados na primeira podem também ser usados na segunda. Isso, é claro, levanta enormes problemas. Será que a cultura realmente pode ser dividida em unidades de informação? De que são feitos os memes? Como eles são passados? Como saber se eles foram realmente passados ou não? O que determina que um meme vai infectar a mente de uma pessoa e de outra não? Quem manda no meu comportamento sou eu ou meus memes? Eu posso escolher quais memes vão me infectar? Utilizar modelos biológicos para tratar a cultura não seria reducionista e mecanicista? [...] É com este espírito que o livro foi escrito. Mas, antes de tudo, é um livro de divulgação científica. Pretende dar ao leitor a fundamentação filosófica e científica para discutir os conceitos aqui tratados. Pode, então, ser lido por um não-filósofo que só sabe de biologia aquilo que aprendeu na escola

I’m currently working on a long article in which I review two recent critiques of computational criticism (one by Nan Z. Da and the other by Franco Moretti and Oleg Sobchuk). Moretti and Sobchuk introduce cultural evolution into their discussion, but don’t say much about it, and I’m suspect that their audience, and mine, is unfamiliar with current work in the area. Accordingly I’ve decided to prepare a brief appendix to serve as a guide. Since I will be citing my own work in my article, and further developing my views, I do not mention it in this guide.

Abstract : In the Maghreb and the Sahara, a sunny rain is called ‘‘the jackal’s wedding’’. Using statistical and ethnological arguments, I will show that this expression probably finds its origin in the Neolithic period, in North Africa or in the Levant, and that from this area it would have spread as far as Japan on the one hand, and in sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand. It is therefore possible to use this expression as a way to understand the meaning of certain images of Saharan rock art, showing the sexual intercourse of a woman and a canid.

Résumé : Au Maghreb et au Sahara, une pluie ensoleillée est désignée sous le nom de « mariage du chacal ». En m’appuyant sur des arguments statistiques et ethnologiques, je montrerai que cette expression trouve probablement son origine au Néolithique, en Afrique du Nord ou au Levant, et que de là elle se serait diffusée jusqu’au Japon d’une part, et en Afrique subsaharienne d’autre part. Il est donc possible de l’utiliser pour tenter de comprendre le sens de certaines représentations rupestres sahariennes, montrant l’accouplement d’une femme et d’un canidé.

A runaway model of agricultural evolution was developed to account for patterns of development and sustainability among the Pre-Pottery Neolithic societies of the southern Levant, and to provide insights into contemporary patterns of development and sustainability. A Darwinian theory of subsistence evolution was developed from first principles, framed in terms of cultural transmission or dual-inheritance theory. An approach to sustainability was formulated in terms of niche construction theory and resilience thinking. Adaptive models from human behavioural ecology (e.g. optimal foraging theory and nutritional ecology) and cultural transmission theory (e.g. cultural group selection and tribal social instincts) were scrutinised, and shown to be inadequate for modelling the evolution of early agriculturally-dependent societies. A maladaptive model of runaway agricultural evolution was developed, and a series of preconditions and predictions were derived. These preconditions and predictions were assessed against early Holocene archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records from the southern Levant. Data from more than 50 archaeological sites spanning more than 3000 years was examined across a range of disciplines, materials and methodologies, including: archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, osteology, genomics, palaeodemography, palaeopathology, site catchment analysis, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, mortuary practices, architecture, material culture and stone tools. A distinctive pattern of development was identified, involving: increasing agricultural investment, increasing ritual investment, demographic growth, increasing social differentiation and inequality, the accumulation of sustainability problems, the accumulation of sustainability solutions, the possible evolution of formal regulative social institutions, and the erosion of social-ecological resilience leading to ‘niche cracking’. Socio-political and economic relationships critical to the instigation and maintenance of runaway agricultural evolution could have rendered LPPNB societies particularly vulnerable to disruption, triggering a de-escalation or reverse runaway. The most plausible triggers to the LPPNB/PPNC release (Ω) and reorganisation (α) appeared to be climate change, crop disease or anthropogenic landscape alteration. The runaway model sufficiently explained numerous dimensions of the PPN archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records in the southern Levant. A number of predictions received strong support (e.g. patterns of agricultural investment, demography and ritual performance and the development of sustainability problems and solutions) and others existed at the limits of archaeological detectability (e.g. the development of LPPNB regulatory social institutions). The idea that sustainability problems elicited genetic responses from PPN populations, and that those responses generated problems of their own, received precursory support from recent genome-wide SNP and WGS data, constituting particularly auspicious areas of future research. The runaway model could plausibly be extended to explain dominant patterns of Holocene socioeconomic development – e.g. patterns of increasing socioeconomic complexity, agricultural dispersals, the ‘origins of the state’, and even present-day patterns of sustainability and development.

The terms Lower Palaeolithic and Middle Palaeolithic represent research constructs within which cultural evolution and prehistoric hominin behaviours can be studied, with the transition usually understood as marking a watershed in our evolution: an adaptation with a million-year record of success that gives way to something new. The interpretation of the Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian technocomplex is usually understood as a period of cultural stasis that extends over much of Africa and Eurasia, principally associated with Homo erectus. Those innovations that can be observed occur widely separated from one another in space and time. Yet a closer and more detailed examination of the Middle Pleistocene records from East Africa, southern Africa, Europe and the Levant reveals significant variation in cultural repertoires. A kind of paradox emerges, in which an Old World Lower Palaeolithic, apparently lacking an overall dynamic of distinctive and directed change in terms of cumulative variation over time, nevertheless culminates in a transition which sees the universal appearance of the Middle Palaeolithic. The two main hypotheses that have been advanced to explain the global transition, which happens essentially synchronously, appear mutually exclusive and contradictory. One view is that altered climatic-environmental constraints enabled and encouraged an 'Out-of-Africa' dispersal (or dispersals) of a new type of genus Homo. This cultural replacement model has been challenged more recently by the alternative hypothesis of accumulating but unrelated and temporally non-linked regional, and in fact potentially autochthonous, processes. The Levant, by virtue of its position bridging Africa and Eurasia (thus being the region into which any out-of-Africa groups would have had first to disperse into), must be seen as a critical region for assessing the relative merits of these competing hypotheses.

Two decades ago, the collective effort of numerous scientists laid the foundation of a new synthesis of physical anthropology, paleoneurobiology, ethology, biocultural evolution, systematic musicology, semiotics, historical linguistics, and developmental psychology in "The Origins of Music" (MIT Press, 2000). The purpose of this was to overcome the lack of archaeological evidence for the prehistoric development of music. This volume, "The Evolution of Music", updates these fields and adds to them a few other new ones: organology, musicological analysis, geomusicology, demography, information theory, statistical modeling, paleo-aesthetics, paleo-phonology, and biological motion. In addition, we address a number of interdisciplinary problems, especially the growing conviction amongst Western ethnomusicologists that humanities and sciences are fundamentally split, and that the scientific approach somehow introduces an "anti-humanitarian" bias.

The aim of this paper is to retrace the existence of prehistoric Saharan myths telling the story of an image that arouses an erotic disorder, comes to life, or so it seems, and may get married to a human being. For this purpose we apply two methods. The first is based on a parallel between a current Kabylian tale, The skillful hunter, and an Egyptian tale dating back to 1200 BC, The tale of the two brothers. A close comparison of the two stories shows an anteriority of the Berber tale, that therefore existed 3000 years ago. With the second – and new – method, we created a database with the well-known variants of African Pygmalion tales. The mythological structural features were binary coded for their presence or absence in each of the target myths. We then treated these features as character traits distributed among taxonomic units (myths). The binary-coded set of data was processed thanks to a phenetic algorithm, in order to identify the optimal "family tree": Bio-Neighbor-Joining. The results show a diffusion of the tales from the Afro-Asiatic region to Southern Africa, which is consistent with a southward migration 2000 years ago (unrooted tree; Delta score = 0.3447; Q-residual score = 0.05968). According to archaeological, historical and ethnographic data, we can conclude that the ancient Saharan people certainly thought that their images could come to life.

There is substantial debate over the extent to which the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition and the dispersal of anatomically modern humans from Africa into Eurasia at the end of the Pleistocene were the result of the same process, related processes, or unrelated but coincident processes. The current debate shows a gap in archaeological method and theory for understanding how different cultural transmission processes create patterning in the material culture of foragers at the resolution of Paleolithic palimpsests. This research project attempts to bridge this gap with a middle-range theory connecting cultural transmission and dual inheritance theory with the archaeological study of flintknappers' flake-by-flake choices in the production of lithic assemblages. The project thus combines a new middle-range theory as well as a new approach to characterizing Paleolithic assemblages for systematic comparison of units of analysis appropriate to distinguishing forces of change in cultural evolution.

In two great caves decorated in the Paleolithic : Montespan and Le Tuc d' Audoubert (out of which a river flows) there were found headless snake skeletons. One of them was a Colubrid, a particularly long snake. The fact that the skeletons are headless may reflect the snake's dangerousness : the dangerous animals, like bison and lions, were often represented arrowed or headless, for instance at the Tuc d' Audoubert cave. To understand the meaning of what was possibly an important ritual I have tried to statistically reconstruct the primal European Paleolithic folklore about the Snake. The software Paup4.0a147 and Mesquite2.75 were used to analyze a database of 42 mythological narratives concerning snakes (available here : http://ruthenia.ru/ folklore/berezkin) and 22 geographical areas, each of them possessing more than ten narratives. The use of such a database was justified by a previous phylogenetic study of folktales concerning wild animals (d'Huy 2015) that showed a low correlation between the distribution of folk tales and geographical associations among populations, and established a parallel between the structure of phylogenetic trees built from folk tales and what we know of the first human migrations ; moreover, these phylogenetic trees allowed the reconstruction of the content of ancient tales corpora, e.g. Paleolithic.

As a phenomena, migrations cause to no little transformations of a community in its way
forward. Migration for the purpose of education in Malabar was a process which led to many
far-reaching socio-cultural developments and also some kind of impacts as years rolled by.
Cultural transactions sharing some cultural ethics and ways of life played a vital role in
defining the development of a community. From the very medieval age itself, Malabar
especially Muslim community witnessed an immense desire in its intelligentsia to travel
abroad like Mecca and Medina, and Cairo as well as it wholeheartedly accepted Sayyids of
Tarem of Hadrmout and assigned to them the core roles of political and religious leaderships
of the community.
Therefore, the educational migration from Malabar was a turning point not only for the
wellbeing of Muslim community but also for the history of Malabar. This paper would be an
attempt to analyse the migration of Malabaris for the purpose of education and its
distinguishing features and impacts in the society.

Over the last 150 years, the Paleolithic era was divided into the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic. This scheme is an arbitrary research construct that confounds chronological, behavioral, and evolutionary meanings. Transitions between these discrete units, and in particular the Lower/Middle Paleolithic transition, received lesser attention.
At present, the Lower/Middle Paleolithic transition is still depicted as a worldwide change from biface production to Levallois technology, similar to the way it has been perceived in the initial stages of research. Some key questions remain open for further inquiry: What changed technologically and typologically beyond those guide fossils? What is the geographical variation of this global change(s)? Did
changes occur as a result of autochthonous developments in each region or by a diffusion wave (s)? What is the societal process(es) that promoted this evolutionary change?
In this paper, I explore the techno-typological variations (reduction sequences and tool kits) in Europe
north of the Pyrenees and how these traits pattern diachronically and spatially in the interval of MIS 9-7, the period during which the transition between Lower and Middle Paleolithic is suggested to occur. The first step will be to describe the range of behaviors that existed during each MIS. The presentation of those variants will track the decision-making processes within reduction sequences. The technotypological variants will be studied in relation to their relative abundance within each assemblage. Then, I will attempt to estimate if observed changes in those traits resulted from a continuous processes or whether the record constitutes of segmented local histories.

Chapter 1 (To know in order to survive) and 2 (A critique of evolved reason) are about the evolution of knowledge and why it matters as a justification and critique of knowledge. Chapter 3 (Why consciousness evolved) is about the nature and evolution of consciousness. Chapter 4-5 are about the evolution of culture (Chapter 4, the origins of sociobiology, Chapter 5, Culture: the human arena, Chapter 6, Genes, memes and the environment). They claim that we should at least analyse 4 levels: genes, brains, culture, and the environment. Culture is maintained because it offers so much benefits to societies as a whole and to its succesful users in particular. Chapter 7 and 8  are about human evolution. They offer a multicausal, multistage model of human evolution in which our ancestors at some point became ecological dominant predators and became entrapped in autokatalytic arms races which reinforced cooperation within groups.