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      The evolution of cultural adaptations: Fijian food taboos protect against dangerous marine toxins

      1 , 2 , 3
      Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
      The Royal Society

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          Abstract

          The application of evolutionary theory to understanding the origins of our species' capacities for social learning has generated key insights into cultural evolution. By focusing on how our psychology has evolved to adaptively extract beliefs and practices by observing others, theorists have hypothesized how social learning can, over generations, give rise to culturally evolved adaptations. While much field research documents the subtle ways in which culturally transmitted beliefs and practices adapt people to their local environments, and much experimental work reveals the predicted patterns of social learning, little research connects real-world adaptive cultural traits to the patterns of transmission predicted by these theories. Addressing this gap, we show how food taboos for pregnant and lactating women in Fiji selectively target the most toxic marine species, effectively reducing a woman's chances of fish poisoning by 30 per cent during pregnancy and 60 per cent during breastfeeding. We further analyse how these taboos are transmitted, showing support for cultural evolutionary models that combine familial transmission with selective learning from locally prestigious individuals. In addition, we explore how particular aspects of human cognitive processes increase the frequency of some non-adaptive taboos. This case demonstrates how evolutionary theory can be deployed to explain both adaptive and non-adaptive behavioural patterns.

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          Most cited references36

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          The evolution of prestige: freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission

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            A theory of human life history evolution: Diet, intelligence, and longevity

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              Demography and Cultural Evolution: How Adaptive Cultural Processes can Produce Maladaptive Losses: The Tasmanian Case

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
                Proc. R. Soc. B
                The Royal Society
                0962-8452
                1471-2954
                June 30 2010
                December 22 2010
                July 28 2010
                December 22 2010
                : 277
                : 1701
                : 3715-3724
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z4
                [2 ]Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z4
                [3 ]Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences, Providence Health Care Research Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6Z 1Y6
                Article
                10.1098/rspb.2010.1191
                2992713
                20667878
                3c43217c-d961-47bb-9ce5-0d40cdbeeb34
                © 2010
                History

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