Data from: Cultural evolution of systematically structured behaviour in a non-human primate

Culture pervades human life and is at the origin of the success of our
species. A wide range of other animals have culture too, but often in a
limited form that does not complexify through the gradual accumulation of
innovations. We developed a new paradigm to study cultural evolution in
primates in order to better evaluate our closest relatives' cultural
capacities. Previous studies using transmission chain experimental
paradigms, in which the behavioural output of one individual becomes the
target behaviour for the next individual in the chain, show that cultural
transmission can lead to the progressive emergence of systematically
structured behaviours in humans. Inspired by this work, we combined a
pattern reproduction task on touch screens with an iterated learning
procedure to develop transmission chains of baboons (Papio papio). Using
this procedure, we show that baboons can exhibit three fundamental aspects
of human cultural evolution: a progressive increase in performance, the
emergence of systematic structure and the presence of lineage specificity.
Our results shed new light on human uniqueness: we share with our closest
relatives essential capacities to produce human-like cultural evolution.