  Experimental evolution has yielded surprising insights into human history and
evolution by shedding light on the roles of chance and contingency in history
and evolution, and on the deep evolutionary roots of cooperation, conflict and
kin discrimination. We argue that an interesting research direction would be to
develop computational and experimental systems for studying evolutionary
processes that involve multiple layers of inheritance (such as genes,
epigenetic inheritance, language, and culture) and feedbacks (such as
gene-culture coevolution and mate choice) as well as open-ended niche
construction---all of which are important in human history and evolution. Such
systems would also be a clear way to motivate evolution and computation to
scholars and students across diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, as
well as to scholars and students in the social sciences and humanities. In
principle, computational models of cultural evolution could be compared to
data, given that large-scale datasets already exist for tracking cultural
change in real-time. Thus, experimental evolution, as a laboratory and
computational science, is poised to grow as an educational tool for people to
question and study where we come from, why we believe what we believe, and
where we as a species may be headed.

Populations and Evolution