Title: Semantic Knowledge Steers Innovation and Fuels Cultural Evolution

Abstract

Cultural evolution facilitates the accumulation of ideas and technologies across generations, culminating in the intricate and open-ended complexity characteristic of humans. Although social learning allows for the transmission of these innovations, the cognitive mechanisms responsible for generating them are not well understood. Traditional theories often reduce innovation to random variation, a simplification that fails to account for the sophistication of human cultural development. We argue that semantic knowledge—the network of associations connecting concepts to their attributes and purposes—directs human innovation and propels cumulative culture forward. To validate this hypothesis, we integrated an agent-based model, designed to investigate how semantic knowledge influences cultural evolutionary dynamics, with a large-scale behavioral experiment (N = 1,243) assessing its impact on human innovation. Both methodologies revealed that semantic knowledge channels exploration toward meaningful outcomes, improves the likelihood of successful innovation, and facilitates the application of previous discoveries to new contexts. Furthermore, semantic knowledge worked synergistically with social learning to boost innovation rates and hasten cumulative cultural progress. Conversely, participants in the experiment who were denied access to semantic knowledge performed no better than chance, even when social learning opportunities were available, and defaulted to superficial exploration strategies. Collectively, these results indicate that semantic knowledge serves as a fundamental cognitive driver of human cumulative culture.

Source: arXiv Generated at: 2026-06-03 00:00:00 UTC