Borrowing Versus Migration as Selection Factors in Cultural Evolution

Raoul Naroll and Rolf Wirsing
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Raoul Naroll: Department of Anthropology State University of New York–Buffalo
Rolf Wirsing: Department of Sociology Universität Konstanz, West Germany

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1976, vol. 20, issue 2, 187-212

Abstract: This paper reports a measurement of the relative importance in cultural evolution of the spread of human culture through peaceful borrowing on one hand and warlike migration on the other. From the worldwide sample of 852 societies in the Ethnographic Atlas , a set of 78 triads was selected by matching from an alphabetized list. Each triad consisted of (1) a base society, (2) a nearby society belonging to a different language family from that of the base society, and (3) a distant society belonging to the same language family as that of the base. Similarities between base and nearby society were compared to similarity between base and distant society with respect to 11 culture traits. Nearby societies tended to resemble base societies more than distant societies but this tendency was not nearly so marked as would have been expected from an earlier study of the same problem by a different method. Conclusion: eliminating warlike migration as a selection factor would somewhat slow down cultural evolution, but peaceful borrowing alone is believed to offer an adequate selection mechanism.

Date: 1976
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:20:y:1976:i:2:p:187-212

DOI: 10.1177/002200277602000201

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