Cumulative cultural evolution is often claimed to be distinctive of human culture. Such claims are typically supported with examples of complex and historically late-appearing technologies. Yet by taking these as paradigm cases, researchers unhelpfully lump together different ways that culture accumulates. This article has two aims: (a) to distinguish four types of cultural accumulation: adaptiveness, complexity, efficiency, and disparity and (b) to highlight the epistemic implications of taking complex hominin technologies as paradigmatic instances of cumulative culture. Addressing these issues both clarifies the cumulative culture concept and demonstrates the importance of further cumulative culture research into non-human animals and ancestral hominins.

中文翻译：

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累积的文化和复杂的文化传统

累积的文化进化通常被认为是人类文化的独特之处。此类主张通常得到复杂且历史上出现较晚的技术示例的支持。然而，通过将这些作为范例，研究人员无益地将文化积累的不同方式混为一谈。本文有两个目的：(a) 区分四种类型的文化积累：适应性、复杂性、效率和差异；(b) 强调将复杂的人类技术作为累积文化的范例的认知含义。解决这些问题既澄清了累积文化的概念，也证明了进一步对非人类动物和祖先人类进行累积文化研究的重要性。