Archaeology and cultural evolution theory both predict that environmental variation and population size drive the likelihood of inventions (via individual learning) and their conversion to population-wide innovations (via social uptake). We use the case study of the adoption of the bow and arrow in the Great Basin to infer how patterns of cultural variation, invention, and innovation affect investment in new technologies over time and the conditions under which we could predict cultural innovation to occur. Using an agent-based simulation to investigate the conditions that manifest in the innovation of technology, we find the following: (1) increasing ecological variation results in a greater reliance on individual learning, even when this decreases average fitness due to the costs of learning; (2) decreasing population size increases variability in the types of learning strategies that individuals use; among smaller populations drift-like processes may contribute to randomization in interpopulation cultural diffusion; (3) increasing the mutation rate affects the variability in learning patterns at different rates of environmental variation; and (4) increasing selection pressure increases the reliance on social learning. We provide an open-source R script for the model and encourage others to use it to test additional hypotheses.

考古学和文化进化理论都预测，环境变化和人口规模会推动发明的可能性（通过个人学习）及其向全民创新的转化（通过社会吸收）。我们利用大盆地使用弓箭的案例研究来推断文化变异、发明和创新的模式如何随着时间的推移影响对新技术的投资，以及我们可以预测文化创新发生的条件。使用基于主体的模拟来研究技术创新中所体现的条件，我们发现：（1）生态变化的增加会导致对个体学习的更大依赖，即使这会因学习成本而降低平均适应度; (2) 人口规模的减少增加了个人使用的学习策略类型的变异性；在较小的人群中，类似漂移的过程可能会导致人群间文化传播的随机化；（3）增加突变率会影响不同环境变化率下学习模式的变异性；(4)选择压力的增加增加了对社会学习的依赖。我们为该模型提供了一个开源 R 脚本，并鼓励其他人使用它来测试其他假设。