Humans' Rise to Global Dominance Driven by Cultural Evolution

New research quantifies how cultural adaptation allowed humans to expand their range far beyond what would be possible through biological evolution alone.

Mar. 18, 2026 at 5:06am

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A study from Arizona State University evolutionary anthropologist Charles Perreault has found that humans' global dominance was predominantly achieved through cultural evolution rather than just biological evolution. Perreault's research shows that cultural innovations in areas like clothing, shelter, hunting, and social organization allowed humans to adapt to new environments much faster than would be possible through genetic changes alone, enabling humans to inhabit nearly every corner of the world in a relatively short evolutionary timeframe.

Why it matters

This research provides a quantitative perspective on how profoundly culture has shaped human evolution and expansion, setting our species apart from other mammals. By demonstrating that cultural evolution compressed what would normally require tens of millions of years of biological diversification into just 300,000 years, the study highlights the outsized role that cultural adaptation has played in making humans the dominant species on the planet.

The details

Perreault compiled geographic range data for nearly 6,000 species of terrestrial mammals and compared them to the global human range. He found that while the typical wild mammal species occupies about 64 square miles, humans encompass about 51 million square miles of land. Perreault's models showed that if humans relied solely on biological evolution, achieving our current geographic range would have required tens of millions of years, thousands of separate species, and enormous differences in body size.

  • The study was published in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2026.

The players

Charles Perreault

An evolutionary anthropologist at Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change who conducted the research on the role of cultural evolution in human expansion.

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What they’re saying

“As humans moved into new environments, they didn't have to wait for genetic mutations to adapt to Arctic cold, tropical forests, deserts or high altitudes. Instead, humans adapted through culturally transmitted technologies, ecological knowledge and cooperative social norms.”

— Charles Perreault, Evolutionary Anthropologist

“This research helps put human uniqueness into a measurable evolutionary perspective. We often say that culture makes us different, but here we can estimate by how much. The results suggest that cultural evolution compressed what would normally require roughly 88 million years of biological diversification into about 300,000 years within a single species.”

— Charles Perreault, Evolutionary Anthropologist

What’s next

Perreault's work is part of a broader effort to build a quantitative science of human macroevolution, combining large comparative datasets with evolutionary theory to better understand the distinctive role of culture in shaping our species' trajectory.

The takeaway

This study provides a powerful demonstration of how cultural evolution has enabled humans to expand our geographic range and ecological dominance far beyond what would be possible through biological evolution alone, setting our species apart from other mammals in a measurable way.