The Secret of Our Success

Knowledge Graph: The Secret of Our Success (Joseph Henrich, 2015)

Editorial spotlight: ↑ culture is the secret — not individual smarts

Concepts

• Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) (importance 5): Culture accumulates adaptive information across generations faster than genes can; ratchet effect where innovations build on prior innovations.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's collective brain (importance 5): Population size and interconnectedness determines rate of cumulative cultural evolution. Larger, better-connected populations innovate faster.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral (importance 5): Cultural practices create selection pressures for genetic adaptations, which enable more complex culture, creating further selection. Runaway feedback loop.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms (importance 4): Specialized psychological adaptations for learning from others: imitation, teaching, conformist transmission, prestige bias.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's prestige-biased transmission (importance 4): Learners preferentially copy successful, prestigious individuals. Drives rapid spread of adaptive behaviors without understanding why they work.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's conformist transmission (importance 4): Disproportionately copy the most common behavior in the group. Stabilizes adaptive traditions and protects against individual errors.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's cultural ratchet (importance 4): Innovations are preserved and improved across generations; rare in other species. Requires high-fidelity transmission + recombination.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's human self-domestication (importance 4): Humans show domestication syndrome traits (gracile bones, smaller teeth, prosociality). Cultural norms and mate choice drove selection against aggression.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's norm psychology (importance 4): Humans have innate psychology for acquiring, internalizing, and enforcing arbitrary social norms. Unique among primates.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's WEIRD psychology (importance 4): Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic societies have unusual psychology (individualism, analytic thought). Not universal human nature.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's cultural group selection (importance 4): Groups with more adaptive cultural practices (norms, institutions) outcompete other groups. Drives cultural evolution of cooperation and sociality.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's population size → innovation rate (importance 4): Larger populations innovate faster and maintain more complex culture. Small populations lose cultural traits (Tasmania effect).. Source: (from training memory of book).
• humans as 'cultural species' (importance 4): Humans are fundamentally cultural animals; cultural learning and transmission are species-defining traits, not optional add-ons to generic primate intelligence.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• culture as second inheritance system (importance 4): Culture transmits adaptations like genes do, but faster and more flexibly. Dual inheritance = genes + culture both matter for human evolution.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's overimitation phenomenon (importance 3): Children copy causally irrelevant actions; chimps skip them. Overimitation aids cultural transmission of opaque practices whose adaptive logic isn't obvious.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's active teaching (rare in animals) (importance 3): Humans uniquely engage in costly active teaching: demonstrating, scaffolding, correcting. Essential for transmitting opaque complex skills.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's mentalizing for cultural learning (importance 3): Theory of mind allows learners to infer teachers' intentions and goals, enabling transmission of practices whose rationale is non-obvious.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's cultural evolvability (importance 3): Culture evolves much faster than genes because it's Lamarckian (acquired traits transmitted) and recombinatory (ideas mix across lineages).. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's prestige (deference-based status) (importance 3): Status earned via skill and success, distinct from dominance. Learners defer to prestigious models, allowing rapid cultural diffusion.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's third-party punishment (importance 3): Humans punish norm violators even when not personally harmed. Enforces group norms and stabilizes cooperation in large groups.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• kin-based institutions (importance 3): Clans, lineages, cousin marriage networks. Dominant form of social organization for most of human history; still prevalent outside WEIRD societies.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's cultural-life-history coevolution (importance 3): Cultural learning is slow and costly; humans evolved extended childhood and long lifespan to amortize learning costs across productive years.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's CREDs (credibility-enhancing displays) (importance 3): Costly behaviors that signal genuine commitment to beliefs (fasting, pilgrimage). Makes cultural transmission of norms and beliefs more effective.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's model-based biases (importance 3): Content biases, context biases, and model biases guide cultural learning. Copy the successful, the prestigious, the majority — not random individuals.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• cultural fitness ≠ genetic fitness (importance 3): Culturally successful traits (spread widely) aren't always genetically adaptive (e.g., celibate priesthood). Culture can evolve against genetic interests.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's cultural maladaptation (importance 3): Cultural evolution can produce individually or genetically maladaptive outcomes (obesity, low fertility) when transmission biases misfire in novel environments.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's innovation-loss equilibrium (importance 3): Cultural complexity reaches equilibrium where innovation rate = loss rate. Smaller populations have higher loss rate, reach lower equilibrium complexity.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• transmission fidelity (copying accuracy) (importance 3): High-fidelity cultural transmission essential for cumulative culture. Language, writing, teaching increase fidelity; enable ratchet.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's Kinship Intensity Index (importance 3): Measures strength of kin-based institutions (cousin marriage, clans, etc.). Predicts psychological variation (individualism, analytic thought, impersonal trust).. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's impersonal prosociality (importance 3): Willingness to cooperate with strangers and follow abstract rules. WEIRD trait; rare in kin-based societies. Enables markets and formal institutions.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• cumulative culture threshold (importance 3): Humans crossed a threshold where cultural evolution became self-reinforcing. Requires: teaching, language, prestige bias, conformity, large groups.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• dominance (force-based status) (importance 2): Status via threat and coercion; common in primates. Humans retain this but prestige becomes more important in large-scale cultural groups.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• embodied capital (Kaplan et al.) (importance 2): Skills and knowledge stored in bodies/brains. Humans have high embodied capital; takes decades to acquire, pays off in productive adulthood.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's supernatural punishment beliefs (importance 2): Belief that gods punish moral violations. Reduces monitoring costs and stabilizes norms in large anonymous groups.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• content bias in cultural transmission (importance 2): Some ideas spread more easily due to intrinsic appeal (disgust-inducing stories, survival-relevant info). Interacts with context biases.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• effective population size (cultural) (importance 2): Not just raw numbers but connectivity. Trade networks, literacy, telecommunications expand effective cultural population size.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• analytic vs. holistic cognition (importance 2): WEIRD people show analytic cognition (focus on objects, attributes); East Asians more holistic (focus on relationships, context). Culturally shaped.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Sperber's epistemic vigilance (importance 2): Cognitive system for evaluating reliability of cultural models before copying. Henrich: prestige and conformity cues override vigilance.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• parochial altruism (importance 2): Willingness to cooperate with in-group and compete against out-group. Culturally evolved via intergroup competition.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• culturally variable incest boundaries (importance 2): Which relatives count as forbidden mates varies culturally (parallel vs. cross cousins). Shows moral intuitions are culturally constructed.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• impersonal trust (importance 2): Trust in abstract institutions and strangers; contrasts with relational trust in kin. WEIRD and market societies show higher impersonal trust.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• relational trust (kin-based) (importance 2): Trust embedded in personal relationships and kinship. Dominant in most human societies; WEIRD societies shifted toward impersonal trust.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's cultural package (importance 2): Bundles of practices, beliefs, and norms that spread together. E.g., market economy + impersonal trust + formal law form a package.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• social brain hypothesis (Dunbar) (importance 2): Brain size correlates with social group size in primates. Henrich extends: cultural brain hypothesis adds cultural learning demands to social cognition.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• neural reuse (Anderson) (importance 2): Brain circuits evolved for one function get co-opted for new cultural practices (e.g., reading). Enables rapid cultural evolution without genetic change.. Source: (from training memory of book).

Claims

• Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis (importance 5): Human brains co-evolved with cumulative culture; our intelligence is largely a product of culture, not vice versa. Culture drives genetic evolution.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• culture beats individual intelligence (importance 5): Humans succeed not because we're individually smarter than other apes, but because we have better cultural transmission mechanisms.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• dual inheritance theory (genes + culture) (importance 5): Human evolution operates via two inheritance systems: genetic and cultural. They interact and co-evolve. Culture is not downstream of genes.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• culture is adaptive information stored socially (importance 5): Culture = pool of adaptive information maintained and improved via social learning. It's not just beliefs or customs but survival technology distributed across minds.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• culture created human intelligence, not vice versa (importance 5): Standard view: smarts → culture. Henrich inverts this: culture drove selection for cultural learning abilities, which we interpret as 'intelligence.'. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Henrich's social brain + cultural brain synthesis (importance 4): Brain expansion was driven both by social competition AND by need to acquire complex cultural repertoires. Cultural learning demands are cognitively expensive.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• cultural practice (cooking) drove genetic evolution (importance 4): Fire and cooking became culturally obligate; humans then evolved smaller guts, smaller teeth, higher caloric needs. Culture changed selection pressures.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• language evolved to transmit cultural knowledge (importance 4): Language primarily evolved not for general communication, but to enable high-fidelity transmission of complex cultural information across generations.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• food taboos and rituals encode adaptive information (importance 4): Many seemingly arbitrary cultural practices (food taboos, preparation rituals) contain cumulative adaptive wisdom that individuals don't understand.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• intergroup competition shaped prosocial norms (importance 4): Groups with stronger prosocial norms (fairness, cooperation, punishment) outcompeted other groups. Cultural group selection.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• cultural institutions rewire cognition (importance 4): Institutions like markets, formal schooling, and religious moralizing gods create selection for specific cognitive styles (analytic, impersonal trust).. Source: (from training memory of book).
• individual intelligence overrated by WEIRD people (importance 4): WEIRD psychology overvalues individual reasoning and undervalues cultural learning. Most human success is collective, not individual.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• culture explains human hypersociality (importance 4): Humans are uniquely cooperative at large scale because cultural group selection favored prosocial norms and norm psychology.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Western Church created WEIRD psychology (importance 4): Catholic Church's Marriage and Family Program (banned cousin marriage, undermined clans) created selection for WEIRD psychological traits over centuries.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• lactase persistence evolved from dairying culture (importance 3): Adult lactase persistence spread in populations with dairying traditions. Culture (herding) created the selection pressure for the gene.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• literacy culturally 'recycled' visual cortex (importance 3): Reading co-opts visual object recognition circuits. Cultural invention (writing) changed brain function without genetic change in ~5,000 years.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• humans became obligate fire users (importance 3): Fire use became culturally obligate by ~400kya; humans then evolved genetic dependencies (small guts, large brains requiring cooked food).. Source: (from training memory of book).
• menopause enables cultural transmission (importance 3): Post-reproductive females provision descendants and transmit cultural knowledge. Unique human life history feature tied to cumulative culture.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• big gods emerged via cultural group selection (importance 3): Moralizing high gods promote cooperation in large groups; societies with such beliefs outcompeted others. Religion is cultural adaptation.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• cultural learners copy status over logic (importance 3): People adopt beliefs and practices from prestigious models even when logic suggests otherwise. Status-based learning overrides individual reasoning.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Neanderthals lacked cumulative culture (importance 3): Neanderthals had big brains but stable tool kits for 200ky. Henrich argues they lacked cultural transmission mechanisms needed for cumulative evolution.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• global interconnection accelerated cumulative culture (importance 3): Modern explosion of innovation driven by unprecedented global population interconnection. Effective collective brain size is now billions.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• moral content is culturally variable (importance 3): What counts as moral varies immensely across societies. Universal is the psychology for acquiring and enforcing norms, not the norms themselves.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• institutions are cultural technologies (importance 3): Markets, law, bureaucracy are cumulative cultural innovations, not natural or universal. They spread and evolve like other cultural practices.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• human brains shrank as culture accumulated (importance 3): Brain size peaked ~20kya then shrank ~10% despite increasing cultural complexity. Suggests culture substitutes for individual processing (collective brain).. Source: (from training memory of book).

Empirical results

• Lost European Explorers vs. Tasmanians (importance 4): Europeans stranded in Tasmania often starved despite being individually 'smarter' — they lacked the cumulative cultural knowledge Tasmanians had.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Tasmanian toolkit simplification (post-isolation) (importance 4): After Bass Strait flooded ~12kya, Tasmanian toolkit simplified over millennia — lost bone tools, fishing, cold-weather clothing. Population too small to maintain complexity.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Fijian manioc detoxification ritual (importance 4): Multi-day processing removes cyanide from manioc. No individual understands the chemistry; transmitted via prestige bias and conformist learning. Adaptive but opaque.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Inuit toolkit complexity (importance 3): Inuit possess hundreds of specialized tools and techniques no single individual could invent; represents thousands of years of cumulative refinement.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• kids outperform chimps on social (not physical) tasks (importance 3): Comparative studies: human children excel at social learning tasks; chimps excel at some physical cognition. We're culturally, not generally, smarter.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• cross-cultural ultimatum game variation (importance 3): Ultimatum game behavior varies widely across societies; correlates with market integration and world religion presence. Norms are culturally variable.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Medieval Church dissolved kin-based institutions (importance 3): Catholic Church banned cousin marriage, weakened clans. Created selection for impersonal prosociality and analytic cognition in Europe.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Oceania toolkit complexity scales with population (importance 3): Across Pacific islands, toolkit complexity correlates with population size and contact. Isolated small populations have simpler toolkits.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• MFP exposure duration predicts psychological outcomes (importance 3): Regions with longer exposure to Church's Marriage and Family Program show more individualism, analytic thought, impersonal prosociality today.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• sickle-cell trait spread via yam farming (importance 2): Yam cultivation created standing water → malaria → selection for sickle-cell allele. Cultural practice (farming) drove genetic adaptation.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Hadza honey acquisition learning curve (importance 2): Hadza foragers take ~20 years to master honey acquisition. Complex skill requires prolonged learning period enabled by extended juvenile dependence.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• market integration predicts fairness offers (importance 2): Economic game experiments: societies with more market exchange make fairer offers. Markets culturally train impersonal prosociality.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• blue-eyed doll study (prestige copying) (importance 2): Children shown prestigious model prefer blue-eyed doll, then copy irrelevant preferences. Prestige bias leads to arbitrary cultural traits spreading.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• demographic transition (cultural maladaptation) (importance 2): Modern low fertility is cultural trait spreading via prestige bias (copying educated elites). Genetically maladaptive but culturally fit.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Neanderthal Mousterian toolkit stability (importance 2): Mousterian toolkit shows minimal innovation over 200,000 years despite large Neanderthal brains. Suggests low cultural accumulation rate.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• printing press increased effective population (importance 2): Printing press radically increased cultural transmission fidelity and range. Expanded effective cultural population size, accelerated cumulative evolution.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• framed-line task cultural differences (importance 2): Americans better at absolute judgments (ignore frame); East Asians better at relative judgments (use frame). Shows cultural cognitive variation.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• public goods game cross-cultural variation (importance 2): Cooperation in public goods games varies widely; correlates with market integration, world religion. Norms are culturally constructed.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• cross-cultural cousin marriage rules (importance 2): Some societies ban all cousin marriage, some allow cross-cousins, some prefer it. Pattern follows kinship institutions, not biology.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Protestant work ethic as cultural trait (importance 2): Protestant Reformation created cultural selection for work ethic, literacy, thrift. Weber was partly right but culture, not theology alone, drove effects.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Late Pleistocene brain size reduction (importance 2): Human cranial capacity decreased ~1,500cc to ~1,350cc over last 20,000 years, concurrent with cultural complexity increase.. Source: (from training memory of book).

Entities

• Tasmania (isolated population case) (importance 3): Island population isolated ~12kya when Bass Strait flooded. Toolkit simplified over millennia due to small population unable to sustain complexity.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Medieval Catholic Church (MFP) (importance 3): Institution that banned cousin marriage and dissolved European kin-based institutions 500-1500 CE. Henrich credits with creating WEIRD psychology.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Wrangham (cooking hypothesis) (importance 2): Wrangham's cooking hypothesis: fire use drove hominin evolution. Henrich extends this as culture-gene coevolution.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• VWFA (visual word form area) (importance 2): Brain region in left fusiform gyrus specialized for recognizing written words; culturally constructed, not genetically innate.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Homo erectus (importance 2): Early hominin with fire use evidence ~1.5mya. Brain size intermediate; probable early cultural learner.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Boyd (dual inheritance pioneer) (importance 2): Co-developed dual inheritance theory with Richerson. Henrich builds on their framework.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Richerson (dual inheritance pioneer) (importance 2): Co-developed dual inheritance theory with Boyd. Not Just Genes, Not Just Memes (2005).. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) (importance 2): Extinct hominin; larger brains than modern humans but less cultural complexity. Henrich uses as counterfactual for culture-over-smarts thesis.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Kaplan (embodied capital theory) (importance 1): Developed embodied capital theory of human life history; extended juvenile period pays for skill acquisition.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Norenzayan (Big Gods) (importance 1): Developed Big Gods hypothesis: moralizing supernatural agents stabilize large-scale cooperation.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Sperber (epistemic vigilance) (importance 1): Developed epistemic vigilance theory; Henrich builds on it for cultural learning.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Weber (Protestant Ethic thesis) (importance 1): Argued Protestant values caused capitalism. Henrich reinterprets via cultural evolution.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Dunbar (social brain hypothesis) (importance 1): Developed social brain hypothesis linking brain size to group size in primates.. Source: (from training memory of book).
• Anderson (neural reuse theory) (importance 1): Developed neural reuse theory; brain regions multitask across domains.. Source: (from training memory of book).

Relations

• Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis requires Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
• Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis builds-on Henrich's collective brain
• culture beats individual intelligence evidences Lost European Explorers vs. Tasmanians
• culture beats individual intelligence supports Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis
• Henrich's prestige-biased transmission exemplifies Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms
• Henrich's conformist transmission exemplifies Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms
• Inuit toolkit complexity evidences Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
• Henrich's collective brain evidences Tasmanian toolkit simplification (post-isolation)
• Tasmanian toolkit simplification (post-isolation) evidences Henrich's population size → innovation rate
• Henrich's cultural ratchet enables Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
• cultural practice (cooking) drove genetic evolution exemplifies Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral
• cultural practice (cooking) drove genetic evolution builds-on Wrangham (cooking hypothesis)
• Henrich's overimitation phenomenon exemplifies Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms
• kids outperform chimps on social (not physical) tasks evidences culture beats individual intelligence
• Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral enables Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis
• lactase persistence evolved from dairying culture exemplifies Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral
• sickle-cell trait spread via yam farming exemplifies Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral
• Henrich's human self-domestication requires intergroup competition shaped prosocial norms
• language evolved to transmit cultural knowledge exemplifies Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral
• Henrich's active teaching (rare in animals) exemplifies Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms
• Henrich's mentalizing for cultural learning enables Henrich's active teaching (rare in animals)
• Fijian manioc detoxification ritual evidences food taboos and rituals encode adaptive information
• Fijian manioc detoxification ritual exemplifies Henrich's prestige-biased transmission
• food taboos and rituals encode adaptive information supports Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
• Henrich's cultural evolvability enables Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
• literacy culturally 'recycled' visual cortex evidences VWFA (visual word form area)
• literacy culturally 'recycled' visual cortex exemplifies neural reuse (Anderson)
• Henrich's prestige (deference-based status) enables Henrich's prestige-biased transmission
• dominance (force-based status) contradicts Henrich's prestige (deference-based status)
• intergroup competition shaped prosocial norms exemplifies Henrich's cultural group selection
• Henrich's norm psychology requires intergroup competition shaped prosocial norms
• Henrich's third-party punishment exemplifies Henrich's norm psychology
• cross-cultural ultimatum game variation evidences Henrich's WEIRD psychology
• Henrich's WEIRD psychology supports cultural institutions rewire cognition
• Medieval Church dissolved kin-based institutions evidences cultural institutions rewire cognition
• Medieval Church dissolved kin-based institutions refutes kin-based institutions
• humans became obligate fire users exemplifies Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral
• humans became obligate fire users builds-on Homo erectus
• Henrich's cultural-life-history coevolution exemplifies Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral
• Hadza honey acquisition learning curve evidences Henrich's cultural-life-history coevolution
• embodied capital (Kaplan et al.) supports Henrich's cultural-life-history coevolution
• embodied capital (Kaplan et al.) cites Kaplan (embodied capital theory)
• menopause enables cultural transmission exemplifies Henrich's cultural-life-history coevolution
• Henrich's CREDs (credibility-enhancing displays) enables big gods emerged via cultural group selection
• big gods emerged via cultural group selection builds-on Norenzayan (Big Gods)
• Henrich's supernatural punishment beliefs exemplifies big gods emerged via cultural group selection
• market integration predicts fairness offers evidences cultural institutions rewire cognition
• Henrich's cultural group selection requires dual inheritance theory (genes + culture)
• dual inheritance theory (genes + culture) builds-on Boyd (dual inheritance pioneer)
• dual inheritance theory (genes + culture) builds-on Richerson (dual inheritance pioneer)
• Henrich's model-based biases exemplifies Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms
• content bias in cultural transmission exemplifies Henrich's model-based biases
• blue-eyed doll study (prestige copying) evidences Henrich's prestige-biased transmission
• cultural learners copy status over logic supports Henrich's prestige-biased transmission
• cultural fitness ≠ genetic fitness requires Henrich's cultural evolvability
• demographic transition (cultural maladaptation) evidences Henrich's cultural maladaptation
• Henrich's cultural maladaptation exemplifies cultural fitness ≠ genetic fitness
• Neanderthals lacked cumulative culture evidences Neanderthal Mousterian toolkit stability
• Neanderthal Mousterian toolkit stability evidences Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis)
• Neanderthals lacked cumulative culture supports culture beats individual intelligence
• Henrich's population size → innovation rate supports Henrich's collective brain
• Oceania toolkit complexity scales with population evidences Henrich's population size → innovation rate
• Tasmania (isolated population case) exemplifies Tasmanian toolkit simplification (post-isolation)
• Henrich's innovation-loss equilibrium supports Henrich's population size → innovation rate
• global interconnection accelerated cumulative culture supports Henrich's collective brain
• effective population size (cultural) exemplifies Henrich's collective brain
• printing press increased effective population evidences global interconnection accelerated cumulative culture
• transmission fidelity (copying accuracy) enables Henrich's cultural ratchet
• individual intelligence overrated by WEIRD people supports Henrich's WEIRD psychology
• analytic vs. holistic cognition exemplifies Henrich's WEIRD psychology
• framed-line task cultural differences evidences analytic vs. holistic cognition
• Sperber's epistemic vigilance cites Sperber (epistemic vigilance)
• Sperber's epistemic vigilance contradicts Henrich's prestige-biased transmission
• humans as 'cultural species' supports Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis
• culture explains human hypersociality requires Henrich's cultural group selection
• public goods game cross-cultural variation evidences culture explains human hypersociality
• parochial altruism exemplifies intergroup competition shaped prosocial norms
• moral content is culturally variable supports Henrich's norm psychology
• culturally variable incest boundaries evidences moral content is culturally variable
• cross-cultural cousin marriage rules evidences culturally variable incest boundaries
• Henrich's Kinship Intensity Index enables Western Church created WEIRD psychology
• Western Church created WEIRD psychology evidences MFP exposure duration predicts psychological outcomes
• MFP exposure duration predicts psychological outcomes evidences Medieval Catholic Church (MFP)
• Henrich's impersonal prosociality exemplifies Henrich's WEIRD psychology
• impersonal trust exemplifies Henrich's impersonal prosociality
• relational trust (kin-based) contradicts impersonal trust
• institutions are cultural technologies exemplifies Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
• Protestant work ethic as cultural trait evidences institutions are cultural technologies
• Protestant work ethic as cultural trait builds-on Weber (Protestant Ethic thesis)
• Henrich's cultural package exemplifies institutions are cultural technologies
• culture is adaptive information stored socially supports Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
• social brain hypothesis (Dunbar) cites Dunbar (social brain hypothesis)
• Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis builds-on social brain hypothesis (Dunbar)
• culture as second inheritance system exemplifies dual inheritance theory (genes + culture)
• human brains shrank as culture accumulated evidences Late Pleistocene brain size reduction
• human brains shrank as culture accumulated supports Henrich's collective brain
• neural reuse (Anderson) cites Anderson (neural reuse theory)
• cumulative culture threshold requires Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms
• cumulative culture threshold requires Henrich's collective brain
• culture created human intelligence, not vice versa supports Henrich's cultural brain hypothesis
• culture created human intelligence, not vice versa supports culture beats individual intelligence
• Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) requires Henrich's cultural ratchet
• Henrich's cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) requires transmission fidelity (copying accuracy)
• Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms requires Henrich's active teaching (rare in animals)
• Henrich's cultural learning mechanisms requires language evolved to transmit cultural knowledge
• Lost European Explorers vs. Tasmanians builds-on Tasmania (isolated population case)
• Henrich's collective brain requires effective population size (cultural)
• Henrich's culture-gene coevolution spiral requires dual inheritance theory (genes + culture)

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