Humans can find music happy, sad, fearful or spiritual. They can be soothed by it or urged to
dance. Whether these psychological responses reflect cognitive adaptations that evolved …

Here, I discuss two broad versions of human cultural evolution which currently exist in the
literature and which emphasize different underlying dynamics. One, which originates in …

Speech and song have been transmitted orally for countless human generations, changing
over time under the influence of biological, cognitive, and cultural pressures. Cross-cultural …

Understanding the evolution of human technology is key to solving the mystery of our
origins. Current theories propose that technology evolved through the accumulation of …

Summary Culture evolves, 1–5 but the existence of cross-culturally general regularities of
cultural evolution is debated. 6–8 As a diverse but universal cultural phenomenon, music …

Long-term and culture-specific experience of music shapes rhythm perception, leading to
enculturated expectations that make certain rhythms easier to track and more conducive to …

Complexity science permeates the policy spectrum but not antitrust. This is unfortunate.
Complexity science provides a high-resolution screen on the empirical realities of markets …

To understand why music is structured the way it is, we need an explanation that accounts
for both the universality and variability found in musical traditions. Here we test whether …

For some, biology explains all there is to know about the mind. Yet many big questions
remain: Is the mind shaped by genes or the environment? If mental traits are the result of …

Successful climate change adaptation depends on the spread and maintenance of adaptive
behaviours. Current theory suggests that the heterogeneity of metapopulation structure can …