Culture led and genes followed: ever more complex tools and practices came first and selected for brains able to learn them, rather than bigger brains producing the tools.

Evidence 2 passages

• groundsSource document

  By this view, the ability to construct many causal models didn't cause fancy tools and practices. The cultural evolution of increasingly sophisticated tools and practices first drove the emergence of this cognitive ability, and then the two entered into a culture-gene co-evolutionary duet.

• groundsSource document

  The point is that being able to construct or acquire these mini-models of causality evolved genetically because it improved cultural transmission.

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