wilkins{at}wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote in
news:blq04j$1lsr$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> William Morse  wrote, snipping out one sentence:
> 
>> One of the key competitive advantages of cultural transmission is
>> that it allows for Lamarckian evolution - the inheritance of acquired
>> characteristics - on top of the power of Mendelian (genetic)
>> evolution. 
> 
> No, it doesn't. Cultural evolution is the evolution of cultural
> phenotypes, not biological phenotypes, and the former do not inherit
> acquired characters.

Well, hmmm...

My first short response is that my statement is about cultural 
transmission, which may not be what you are referring to as cultural 
evolution. An example - the macaque who figured out that throwing 
handfuls of grain mixed with sand into the water and scooping up the 
floating grain was more efficient than laboriously picking out the grain 
from the sand. Now all the macaques in that tribe practice the technique. 
This to me is certainly lamarckian. Perhaps you don't call this culture, 
but prefer to call it simply learned behavior, with only the mode of 
learning being an element of the cultural phenotype, not the actual 
learned content. I can live with that (or something like it), in which 
case I would be happier with your statement that cultural phenotypes do 
not inherit acquired characters. Of course, I would still disagree with 
the statement, but I would be happier with it :-) 

I do think the question of malleability of cultures is an interesting 
one, and can give a longer response with a little more explanation of 
your claim that cultural evolution is also Mendelian.

Yours,

Bill Morse
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