Here we investigate the evolutionary dynamics of several kinds of modern cultural artefacts—pop music, novels, the clinical literature and cars—as well as a collection of organic populations. In contrast to the general belief that modern culture evolves very quickly, we show that rates of modern cultural evolution are comparable to those of many animal populations. Using time-series methods, we show that much of modern culture is shaped by either stabilizing or directional forces or both and that these forces partly regulate the rates at which different traits evolve. We suggest that these forces are probably cultural selection and that the evolution of many artefact traits can be explained by a shifting-optimum model of cultural selection that, in turn, rests on known psychological biases in aesthetic appreciation. In sum, our results demonstrate the deep unity of the processes and patterns of cultural and organic evolution.

在这里，我们调查了几种现代文化文物——流行音乐、小说、临床文学和汽车——以及一系列有机种群的进化动态。与现代文化发展非常迅速的普遍信念相反，我们表明现代文化进化的速度与许多动物种群的速度相当。使用时间序列方法，我们表明，现代文化的大部分是由稳定力或方向力或两者共同塑造的，并且这些力在一定程度上调节了不同特征进化的速度。我们认为这些力量可能是文化选择，并且许多人工制品特征的演变可以通过文化选择的最佳转移模型来解释，而这种模型又依赖于审美欣赏中已知的心理偏见。总共，