Chapter Six focuses on the dramatic increase in brain size that began two and a half million years ago during the transition from Australopithecus to Homo. She does not seem to be aware that this contradicts the thesis of her book. That is, if imitation were the bottleneck to culture, then prior to the origin of culture there would have been variation everywhere, and the onset of imitation would have funneled this variation in a few of the most useful directions. The evidence she cites is, in fact, consistent with the thesis that creativity, rather than imitation, was the bottleneck to culture. The lack of cultural complexity in animals, despite the evidence that, when put to the test, they can imitate, is also consistent with this proposal.
Imitative capacity remains latent or hidden until there is variation for it to work on.
There has to be something worth imitating before the ability to imitate will manifest itself. Novelty can then breed more novelty. The material that follows, dealing with the relationship of memetics to language and various social issues such as beauty and birth control, is well done. It provides a wealth of intriguing alternatives to explanations offered by sociobiology and evolutionary psychology over the last few decades. Like Dawkins, Dennett, Brodie, and Lynch, Blackmore can not resist going to great lengths to convince us that religion and the New Age movement are nothing but hotbeds of manipulative tricks.