Evolvability refers to the capacity, ability, or potential of an organism to generate heritable variation. Under this view, much extragenetic inheritance is regarded not as noise, fine-tuning, or a luxury add-on to genetic inheritance but as an essential tool for short-term adaptation. With respect to humans, the cultural contribution to evolvability is key to understanding evolution. In many instances, cultural inheritance directs genetic inheritance, not the other way around. Culture, being relatively free from the genetic leash, can produce change that genetic inheritance cannot. Soft inheritance—the view that heredity can be changed by an organism’s experiences—has been disdained for over a century, but in light of the recent outpouring of data demonstrating extragenetic inheritance, defining evolution only in terms of genetic change ignores half the adaptive process, discarding much of what is interesting and relevant. Archaeologists can play a key role in evolvability research, given their contributions to topics such as niche construction, modularity, mosaic evolution, and developmental bias.

进化性是指生物体产生可遗传变异的能力、能力或潜力。根据这种观点，许多外遗传并不被视为噪音、微调或遗传遗传的奢侈附加物，而是被视为短期适应的重要工具。就人类而言，文化对进化的贡献是理解进化的关键。在许多情况下，文化遗传指导基因遗传，而不是相反。文化相对不受遗传束缚，可以产生基因遗传无法产生的变化。软遗传——遗传可以通过有机体的经历改变的观点——一个多世纪以来一直受到蔑视，但鉴于最近大量的数据表明外遗传，仅根据遗传变化来定义进化忽略了一半的适应性过程，丢弃许多有趣且相关的东西。鉴于考古学家对生态位构建、模块化、镶嵌进化和发育偏差等主题的贡献，他们可以在进化性研究中发挥关键作用。