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Introduction -- Culture and evolution -- The origins of cognitive modernity -- The biological origins of culture -- Cultural specialization -- Cognitive specialization -- Cultural flexibility -- Cognitive flexibility -- Conclusion

Following a recent re-evaluation of evidence from an archaeological site in SE Australia, the possibility of a 120 thousand years (ka) old human presence in the Fifth Continent has been suggested. However, the commonly accepted date for the peopling of Australia remains within the range of 50 - 65 ka. Even if the newly proposed date were halved, an uninterrupted 60 ka continuity in the same territory would raise a few questions regarding the transmission mechanisms that have enabled the retention of the massive amount of knowledge acquired during such an extended period, especially when considering the lack of demographic strength, which is believed to be a prerequisite for effective social learning. I argue that the emergence, developmental rate, and extent of Australian culture reflect an 'additive' evolutionary strategy centred on a ritually regulated feedback loop between the volume of information flow and the level of social elaboration. The model forwarded in this paper is at odds with current theoretical approaches to cultural evolution in which Aboriginal traditions are often portrayed as living examples of Pleistocene cross-cultural universals.

In suggesting that the rules that govern the evolution of cumulative culture are observed in all modern societies, gene-culture coevolution theory implies that the biases that affect the successful 'ratcheting' and efficient transmission of innovations are cross-cultural universals. In the modeling of the theory the stress is placed on demographic strength, the absence of which would render small and isolated populations vulnerable to the 'treadmill effect', the inevitable consequence of impaired social learning. However, the ethnographic literature documents small groups of isolated hunters and gatherers who have devised intricate risk-reduction networks that do not necessarily proliferate technological innovations and function only in low demographic settings. Moreover, with merit and abilities being equally distributed, the model-based and conformist biases that influence social learning in gene-culture coevolution theory become irrelevant and elaborate 'leveling mechanisms' inhibit the acquisition of status and prestige. As a result, no cultural models can rise to prominence and sway the trajectory of cultural change. Contrary to the predictions of the theory, these societies do not seem to be plagued by cultural loss and, instead of hopelessly running the treadmill and living in poverty, they have developed egalitarian and, to an extent, 'affluent' societies. The model forwarded in this paper resolves this apparent paradox by enrolling the hypothesis of 'cultural neoteny'. It is contended that egalitarian societies – despite their simple (immediate-return) mode of subsistence – are not the vestiges of an ancestral/universal stage from which more complex (delayed-return) economies would linearly evolve, but a relatively recent and idiosyncratic achievement through 'subtractive cultural evolution'.
Keywords: anarchic theory in ethnography, cultural heterochrony, cumulative/subtractive cultural evolution, immediate-return/egalitarian societies, ratcheting/leveling mechanisms.