Abstract
A fundamental issue in understanding human diversity is whether or not there are regular patterns and processes involved in cultural change. Theoretical and mathematical models of cultural evolution have been developed and are increasingly being used and assessed in empirical analyses. Here, we test the hypothesis that the rates of change of features of human socio-cultural organization are governed by general rules. One prediction of this hypothesis is that different cultural traits will tend to evolve at similar relative rates in different world regions, despite the unique historical backgrounds of groups inhabiting these regions. We used phylogenetic comparative methods and systematic cross-cultural data to assess how different socio-cultural traits changed in (i) island southeast Asia and the Pacific, and (ii) sub-Saharan Africa. The relative rates of change in these two regions are significantly correlated. Furthermore, cultural traits that are more directly related to external environmental conditions evolve more slowly than traits related to social structures. This is consistent with the idea that a form of purifying selection is acting with greater strength on these more environmentally linked traits. These results suggest that despite contingent historical events and the role of humans as active agents in the historical process, culture does indeed evolve in ways that can be predicted from general principles
Highlights
Despite being a relatively homogeneous species genetically, humans are characterized by an extraordinary degree of cultural diversity [1,2]
Just as Darwin built up the empirical evidence of biological evolution and the mechanisms responsible for it [9], a key task facing those who argue that there are regularities in cultural change is to build a similar body of evidence that explains the patterns and processes involved in generating the great diversity of human cultures [6,10]
At the other end of the scale, traits that evolved relatively faster in both groupings were social variables such as class stratification, the inheritance distribution & rule for movable property and domestic organization. These results indicate that cultural traits in these two cultural regions tend to evolve at similar relative rates, i.e. those traits that change most in Bantu societies are generally the same as those traits that change most in Austronesian societies
Summary
Despite being a relatively homogeneous species genetically, humans are characterized by an extraordinary degree of cultural diversity [1,2]. Environment changes relatively rapidly, as may occur during a population expansion into new habitats, environmental traits may be more liable to change than ‘social’ traits To test this hypothesis, we need data that have been coded across a large number of cultures, and some way of being able to track or infer changes over time. Our starting point for assessing the rates of change in different socio-cultural traits is to map the selected ethnographic variables onto the Bantu and Austronesian phylogenies. When compiling the ethnographic atlas, the authors employed a coding of ‘missing data’ when they felt there was not enough information to make a judgement about what state a particular variable should take for each society In our analysis, these societies are basically removed from the phylogeny on a trait-by-trait basis and not included in the calculation of the number of trait changes. All statistical analyses involving the estimated number of changes derived from the phylogenetic comparative analyses were conducted using SPSS v. 21
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