Cultural primatology

Cultural primatology focuses on the study of culture in nonhuman primates. Culture is defined as innovations that are spread and maintained between and within generations by social learning. The principal method used to establish the presence of culture in nature is the “method of exclusion.” It states that cultural processes can be inferred if a behavior has high prevalence at some sites but is absent at others, while genetic or ecological processes can be ruled out. Using this method, cultural variation was found in various primate species. A second approach to the study of animal cultures focuses on the process of social learning. In order for culture to be maintained, contact between generations and some form of oblique or horizontal transmission must exist. Culture can evolve, and complex cumulative human culture was built on a foundation similar to primate culture