Abstract

The Modern Synthesis in evolutionary biology cemented a gene-centric view of variation production, transmission and selection; and Ernst Mayr’s proximate–ultimate causation distinction reinforced the claim that behaviour is evolutionarily secondary. Recent developments, encapsulated in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES), challenge this view, integrating behavioural innovation, social learning, niche construction and non-genetic inheritance as evolutionary forces in their own right. In this chapter, we argue that culture should be regarded as a primary cause of human evolution and not merely as an epiphenomenon of genetic evolution. Drawing on critiques of the proximate–ultimate divide, and on archeological reconstructions of long-term cultural trajectories, we propose a “culture-driven evolutionary” framework. This model implies that cultural innovations can originate at the behavioural level, spread and stabilize through non-genetic transmission channels and alter both cognitive capacities and neural substrates—via mechanisms such as cultural exaptation and cultural neural reuse—without requiring prior, causally related genetic change. Archeological evidence demonstrates that such processes have shaped human life forms across different Homo populations, independently of speciation events or key genetic mutations. Cultural innovations emerge primarily through recombination, repurposing and cumulative integration of previously devised cultural traits at the genuinely behavioural-cultural level. We thus advance a circular, rather than linear, conception of causation in human evolution where genetic, behavioural and environmental factors mutually influence each other. By foregrounding the autonomy of cultural dynamics in evolutionary explanations, our approach has implications for the epistemology of human evolution, challenges reductionist assumptions and advocates for integrative frameworks bridging biology, archeology and cognitive science.