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In this talk we will cover the structural and dynamical organization of a special type of social networks. In particular, we study hunter-gatherer (HG) populations, a live fossil of ancient societies, in order to address how cultural traits and innovations emerge and disseminate among the different members of these societies. First we will show that the structure of HG networks is highly efficient in disseminating information and that what confers this property is the particular wiring of friendship networks. Second we will show that these ties also plays the key role in the emergence of innovations by joining specialized knowledge from different pats of the networks. Finally, we will analyze the role that reputation have on the latter processes to show that while a biased mating towards reputed agents provides an acceleration of innovations too much bias lead to a slow down of cultural evolution and a less democratic distribution of knowledge.