Can Robots Teach Us How Culture Develops?

“We actually know surprisingly little about how culture develops. We understand a great deal about the emergence of social, cooperative behaviour – hunting, genetic diversification etc – but not very much about the development of cultural artefacts, such as dance, art and humour. We can theorise from archaeological finds, but the science is necessarily inexact as no one has ever been around to record the birth of proto-culture. Until now.”