Culture evolves

Last semester at UVU I took a biology and culture topics course.  The intersection between culture and biology is a hot topic right now and I was completely enthralled.  At the end of the semester, we each had to do a presentation and write a paper on any topic that incorporates biology and culture.
I decided to write a paper on cultural evolution.  Specifically, does culture evolve and if so, does it progress in giant leaps or in small increments the way that biological evolution does.  This is an interesting question and I was actually surprised by the answer.  Logically, we might assume that cultural evolution progresses in giant leaps because unlike biological evolution, it is a guided process.  However, the evidence I present in the paper says that the opposite is the case.
I read a lot for this project and referenced a lot of sources.  The biggest and most important of these were the book Not By Genes Alone by Richerson and Boyd.  I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand how culture evolves.  Some evolutionary thinkers such as Richard Dawkins have argued that culture evolves in a genelike way.  He calls them "memes".  Others such as Dan Sperber have argued that culumulative cultural evolution is not possible because culture is not faithfully transmitted like genes are.  Culture is transmitted analogously.  The way cultural traits are transmitted depend heavily on the idiosyncrasies of individuals.  However, Richerson and Boyd argue that culture definitely does evolve but memelike transmission is not necessary.  In fact, they say that a high mutation rate is actually necessary to prevent it from spiraling out of control!
You can download and read my complete paper here.  There was a powerpoint presentation that went with it and you can get that here.
More on this topic later.  Enjoy!