Journal
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 365, Issue 1559, Pages 3807-3819Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0009
Keywords
cultural traits; cross-cultural comparison; phylogeny; consistency index; correlated evolution; simulation study
Categories
Funding
- NSF [BCS-0132927, 0323793]
- Harvard University
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [0323793] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [0323793] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Cross-cultural anthropologists have increasingly used phylogenetic methods to study cultural variation. Because cultural behaviours can be transmitted horizontally among socially defined groups, however, it is important to assess whether phylogeny-based methods-which were developed to study vertically transmitted traits among biological taxa-are appropriate for studying group-level cultural variation. Here, we describe a spatially explicit simulation model that can be used to generate data with known degrees of horizontal donation. We review previous results from this model showing that horizontal transmission increases the type I error rate of phylogenetically independent contrasts in studies of correlated evolution. These conclusions apply to cases in which two traits are transmitted as a pair, but horizontal transmission may be less problematic when traits are unlinked. We also use the simulation model to investigate whether measures of homology ( the consistency index and the retention index) can detect horizontal transmission of cultural traits. Higher rates of evolutionary change have a stronger depressive impact on measures of homology than higher rates of horizontal transmission; thus, low consistency or retention indices are not necessarily indicative of 'ethnogenesis'. Collectively, these studies demonstrate the importance of using simulations to assess the validity of methods in cross-cultural research.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available