Abstract
A general theory of cultural evolution is formulated using a cognitive dimension reduction scheme. Rational but cognitively limited agents iteratively invent and redefine abstract concepts in order to best represent their natural and social environment. These concepts are used for decision-making, and determine the agents’ overall behavior. The collection of concepts an agent uses constitutes his/her cultural profile. As the importance of social interactions increases and/or agents become more intelligent, we find a series of dynamic phase transitions by which the coherence of concepts advances in society. This model explains the so-called “cultural explosion in human evolution” 50,000 years ago, as a spontaneous ordering phenomenon of the individual mental representations.