Cultural dynamics

•Micro-cultural dynamics of cognition and communication form, maintain, and transform culture.•Micro-cultural dynamics comprise production, grounding, interpretation, and memory.•Micro-cultural dynamics leave cultural artefacts that carry cultural information as an outcome.•Cognitive and communicative processes generate a cultural niche, to which they in turn adapt.•Cultural dynamics tend to retain information for individual survival and collective action.

Cultural dynamics can be characterized as macro-level phenomena of the stability and change in distribution of cultural information within a human population, and the micro-level mechanisms about the social transmission of cultural information that drive the trajectory of cultural formation, maintenance, and transformation. This article focuses on the micro-level mechanisms, which consist of the intrapersonal and interpersonal processes of production, grounding, interpretation, and memory of cultural information. The review of recent empirical research suggests that the cultural transmission tends to favour the retention of cultural information beneficial for the individual survival in the hunter–gatherer ecosystem, and collective action that supports a group living.