Culture is cumulative because it grows and builds upon itself over time, much like a collective memory or a shared toolkit that expands with each new generation and innovation.
What is Cumulative Culture?
Cumulative culture describes the process by which societies build increasingly complex knowledge, skills, technologies, and practices by adding new inventions and improvements onto existing ones. It's not just about having different ideas from previous generations, but about refining, modifying, and adding to what was already there.
As defined in research, cumulative culture is a process by which innovations are progressively incorporated into a population's stock of skills and knowledge, generating more complex repertoires (23–26). This means that new discoveries or techniques aren't simply replacing old ones; they are often layered on top, leading to greater sophistication and complexity in everything from tools to social institutions.
The Process of Cultural Accumulation
The process of cultural accumulation relies heavily on social learning. Individuals learn from others within their group, inheriting a vast store of existing cultural information. However, the key to cumulative culture is the ability to not just copy, but also to:
- Innovate: Create new ideas, skills, or tools.
- Modify: Improve upon existing cultural elements.
- Transmit: Pass these modified or new elements to others effectively.
This cycle of learning, innovation, modification, and transmission allows societies to retain useful knowledge and improvements, preventing the constant need to reinvent things from scratch. Over generations, this leads to highly complex cultural traits that no single individual could invent on their own within their lifetime.
Examples of Cumulative Culture
Cumulative culture is evident in almost every aspect of human society. Here are a few examples:
- Technology: The evolution of the computer started with simple mechanical calculators, progressed through vacuum tubes, transistors, integrated circuits, and complex software. Each stage incorporated and built upon the innovations of the previous one, leading to the powerful devices we have today.
- Language: Languages evolve over time, adding new words, phrases, and grammatical structures based on new experiences, interactions, and needs.
- Scientific Knowledge: Scientific understanding progresses by building upon previous discoveries. New theories are often modifications or extensions of older ones, tested and refined over generations of research.
- Cooking Techniques: Culinary practices evolve as new ingredients are discovered, new cooking methods are invented (like ovens or microwaves), and different cultures share techniques.
Through this continuous process of adding and refining, culture becomes more complex and adaptive, enabling human societies to develop sophisticated solutions to challenges and achieve feats that would be impossible for non-cumulative species.
