  It has been proposed that, since the origin of life and the ensuing evolution
of biological species, a second evolutionary process has appeared on our
planet. It is the evolution of culture-e.g., ideas, beliefs, and artifacts.
Does culture evolve in the same genuine sense as biological life? And if so,
does it evolve through natural selection, or by some other means? Why does no
other species remotely approach the degree of cultural complexity of humans?
These questions lie at the foundation of who we are and what makes our lives
meaningful. Although much research has been done on how selective pressures
operating at the biological level affect cognition and culture, little research
has focused on culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. Like
biological forms, cultural forms-ideas, attitudes, artifacts, mannerisms,
etc.-incrementally adapt to the constraints and affordances of their
environment through descent with modification. In some respects culture appears
to be Darwinian, i.e., a process of differential replication and selection
amongst randomly generated variants. This suggests that knowledge of biological
evolution can be put to use to gain insight into culture. However, attempts to
apply Darwinian theory to culture have not yielded the kind of unifying
framework for the social sciences that it provided for the biological sciences,
largely because of the nonrandom manner in which the mind-the hub of cultural
change-generates and assimilates novelty. This paper investigates how and when
humans became capable of supporting culture, and what previously held it back,
focusing on how we attained the creative powers we now possess. To invent in
the strategic, intuitive manner characteristic of humans requires a cognitive
architecture that supports the capacity to spontaneously adapt concepts to new
circumstances and merge them together to conceptualize new situations.
