Culturgen (culture + -gen) is a term used to denote a theoretical 'unit' of culture or cultural evolution. More specifically, analogous to a gene, it is a cultural artifact or element of behaviour whose repetition or reproduction is transmissible from one generation. It has largely been displaced by the similar term meme.^[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 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 his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) and On Human Nature (1978). In the book, the two assume that culturgens are stored in long-term memory or are readily observable in the external world, and are to be transmitted via socialization.^[3] Genes, Mind, and Culture received many highly negative reviews in the scientific press, however;^[4][5] it was re-issued in 2005 with a review of subsequent developments.^[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. The term has declined in popularity; the slightly older term meme—coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976)—is now used in its stead,^[1] almost universally (even by Wilson in his later writings).^{[citation needed]}