The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach (Ucl S) - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Virtually all aspects of human behaviour show enormous variation both within and between cultural groups, including material culture, social organisation and language. Thousands of distinct cultural groups exist: about 6,000 languages are spoken today, and it is thought that a far greater number of languages existed in the past but became extinct.
Using a Darwinian approach, this book seeks to explain this rich cultural variation. There are a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural diversification might be tree-like, that is, phylogenetic: material and non-material culture is clearly inherited by descendants, there is descent with modification, and languages appear to be hierarchically related. Here, for the first time, this title tackles these questions of cultural evolution empirically and quantitatively, using a range of case studies from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia and America.

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