There is a famous puzzle about the first 3 million years of archaeologically visible human technological history. The pace of change, of innovation and its uptake, is extraordinarily slow. In particular, the famous handaxes of the Acheulian technological tradition first appeared about 1.7 Ma, and persisted with little change until about 800 ka, perhaps even longer. In this paper, I will offer an explanation of that stasis based in the life history and network characteristics that we infer (on phylogenetic grounds) to have characterized earlier human species. The core ideas are that (i) especially in earlier periods of hominin evolution, we are likely to find archaeological traces only of widespread and persisting technologies and practices; (ii) the record is not a record of the rate of innovation, but the rate of innovations establishing in a landscape; (iii) innovations are extremely vulnerable to stochastic loss while confined to the communities in which they are made and established; (iv) the export of innovation from the local group is sharply constrained if there is a general pattern of hostility and suspicion between groups, or even if there is just little contact between adults of adjoining groups. That pattern is typical of great apes and likely, therefore, to have characterized at least early hominin social lives. Innovations are unlikely to spread by adult-to-adult interactions across community boundaries. (v) Chimpanzees and bonobos are characterized by male philopatry and subadult female dispersal; that is, therefore, the most likely early hominin pattern. If so, the only innovations at all likely to expand beyond the point of origin are those acquired by subadult females, and ones that can be expressed by those females, at high enough frequency and salience for them to spread, in the bands that the females join. These are very serious filters on the spread of innovation.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

中文翻译：

---

人类进化中的创新、生活史和社交网络

关于考古可见的人类技术史的前三百万年，有一个著名的谜题。变革、创新及其应用的步伐异常缓慢。特别是，阿舍利技术传统中著名的手斧首次出现于大约 1.7 Ma，并且一直持续到大约 800 ka，甚至可能更长，几乎没有变化。在本文中，我将根据我们（基于系统发育的理由）推断出早期人类物种特征的生命史和网络特征，对这种停滞做出解释。核心思想是：（i）特别是在古人类进化的早期阶段，我们很可能只能找到广泛且持久的技术和实践的考古痕迹；(ii) 该记录不是创新率的记录，而是景观中创新率的记录；(iii) 创新极易受到随机损失的影响，同时仅限于其产生和建立的社区；(iv) 如果群体之间普遍存在敌意和猜疑，或者即使相邻群体的成年人之间几乎没有接触，当地群体的创新输出就会受到严重限制。这种模式是类人猿的典型特征，因此可能至少是早期人类社会生活的特征。创新不太可能通过成人之间跨越社区边界的互动来传播。(v) 黑猩猩和倭黑猩猩的特点是雄性繁衍和亚成年雌性传播；因此，这就是最有可能的早期人类模式。如果是这样，那么唯一可能扩展到起源点之外的创新是那些由亚成年雌性获得的创新，以及这些雌性可以以足够高的频率和显着性表达的创新，以便它们在雌性所形成的带中传播。加入。这些都是对创新传播的非常严重的过滤器。本文是主题“生命史与学习：童年、看护和老年如何塑造人类和其他动物的认知和文化”的一部分。