How can it be that this took such a long time? What was the driving force behind that sudden leap forward? And how is it possible that through the ages complex techniques have been lost again also?

These are questions that have occupied the minds of anthropologists and archeologists for decades, says philosopher of Technology Krist Vaesen. The Fleming is affiliated with the Philosophy & Ethics group of the TU/e Department of IE&IS as Assistant Professor, where he researches the extent to which methods from evolutionary biology are applicable to cultural development.

Culture must be passed on from generation to generation – especially in an illiterate world. Underlying the ‘demographic hypothesis’ so popular nowadays is the idea that cultural manifestations only survive if the new generation counts enough talented individuals who can learn to execute certain skills, like making tools, at least as well as the preceding generation.

“The more people, the greater the chance of an Einstein”, as Vaesen illustrates that train of thought. Although that may seem self-evident when considered through our Western eyes, the Belgian holds that this is exactly where the crux is. “That reasoning only holds water when knowledge and skills effectively spread through the population. While this is the case in our modern society, it is a moot point whether it was true for the hunter-gatherers from the Stone Age as well. If you look at existing hunter-gatherers today, whose society most resembles that of people from the Late Stone Age, you see that knowledge is transferred especially from parents to children. It is by no means obvious that a child would be apprenticed to a master from a neighboring community. Another thing you see is that it is not appreciated at all if someone tries to excel and conceives of a novelty. Indeed, you need to conform to the group and hold on to the things passed on by tradition.”

Vaesen used a number of much-quoted models and proved that the connection between cultural complexity and population size disappears like snow under a hot sun when you substitute the assumptions that are used by other assumptions, which he considers to be more plausible. In this reasoning he was supported by three archeologists with whom he jointly submitted the PNAS article in the end: Canadian Mark Collard, Australian Richard Cosgrove, and Dutchman Wil Roebroeks – who may well be the most prominent archeologist of our country as the recipient of the Spinoza Prize. Vaesen is working closely together with Roebroeks’s Leiden research group within the framework of his Vidi project, in which the philosopher of science is critically investigating the theory of cultural evolution.