Punctuated equilibrium at 50: Anything there for evolutionary anthropology? Yes; definitely

The theory of punctuated equilibrium (PE) was developed a little over 50 years ago to explain long‐term, large‐scale appearance and disappearance of species in the fossil record. A theory designed specifically for that purpose cannot be expected, out of the box, to be directly applicable to biocultural evolution, but in revised form, PE offers a promising approach to incorporating not only a wealth of recent empirical research on genetic, linguistic, and technological evolution but also large databases that document human biological and cultural diversity across time and space. Here we isolate the fundamental components of PE and propose which pieces, when reassembled or renamed, can be highly useful in evolutionary anthropology, especially as humanity faces abrupt ecological challenges on an increasingly larger scale.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Evolutionary Anthropology (print)

• Publication date

  2023-11-14

• Fields of study

  Biology, Sociology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/evan.22009PMID 37961949
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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