 It is now common to identify heredity with the transmission of genes, or even more concretely with the transmission of DNA sequence, from parents to offspring. It is, however, clear on reflection that there are other ways in which offspring may receive from parents resources or cues that affect their development. This is particularly apparent in humans, and the suggestion that social and cultural cues may serve as an additional “inheritance system” has been made many times. These observations, and the models of dual inheritance of genes and culture (e.g., Boyd &amp; Richerson 1985; Cavalli-Sforza &amp; Feldman 1981; Durham 1991; for a recent overview see Mesoudi 2011, Lewens 2015), are a useful starting point from which to approach the more general project of elucidating the notion of inheritance system. Cultural inheritance, however, is a broad category, whereas the analysis of inheritance systems discussed below tends to be more fine-grained (see Sterelny 2001: 337). The term “inheritance systems” is used to describe different mechanisms, processes, and factors, by which different kinds of hereditary information and variation are stored and transmitted between generations.