How material constraints affect the cultural evolution of rhythm

While widely acknowledged in the cultural evolution literature, ecological factors - i.e., differences in the physical environment in which cultural productions evolve - haven’t been investigated experimentally. Here we present an experimental investigation of this type of factors by using a transmission chain experiment. We predicted that differencesin the distance between identical tools (drums) and in the order in which they are to be used would cause the evolution of different rhythms. The evidence confirms our predictions and thus provide a proof of concept that ecological factors can influence cultural productions and that their effects can be experimentally isolated and measured. One noteworthy finding is that ecological factors can on their own lead to more complex rhythms.