Technological Phylogenetics with Selection Pressure Annotation: Toward Version-Controlled Repositories for Material Culture Evolution

This paper proposes the Technological Phylogenetics Repository (TPR), a framework for modeling the evolution of technological artifacts using commit-like structures and structured selection pressure annotation.

The framework captures both:
- Objective pressures (performance, cost, engineering constraints)
- Subjective pressures (perception, safety, cultural acceptance)

A pilot reconstruction of the safety bicycle lineage (1876–1892) demonstrates feasibility, showing that subjective pressures can conditionally improve explanatory power when supported by evidence.

Code and supplementary materials:
https://github.com/xsytrance/tpr-paper