More specifically, analogous to a gene, it is a cultural artifact or element of behaviour whose repetition or reproduction is transmissible from one generation to the next.
[1] The term was coined in 1980 by two American scientists—the biomathematician Charles J. Lumsden and the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson[2]—in a controversial attempt to analyse cultural evolution by using techniques borrowed from population genetics, to develop a comprehensive theory of how genes interact with cultural variation,[3] and to infer a theory of the evolution of the human mind.
The fullest exposition of their theory appeared in their book Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (1981),[4][5] which expanded upon the agenda that Wilson had laid out in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) and On Human Nature (1978).
In the book, the two assume that culturgens are stored in long-term memory, are readily observable in the external world, and are to be transmitted via socialization.
[6] It also effectively means much the same as the older term cultural trait used by anthropologists, and offers similar difficulties of identification and definition.