Evolutionary Implications of Cross-Cultural Correlations

Abstract

In 1896 Boas argued that "if anthropology desires to establish laws governing the growth of culture it must not confine itself to comparing the results of the growth alone, but whenever such is feasible it must compare the processes of growth" (p. 280). However, later it was argued that evolutionary inferences could not and should not be made from synchronic data. But is the comparative evolutionary method of anthropology entirely illegitimate? In this article, the authors test this hypothesis using synchronic and diachronic data on kinship organization and terminology from the CircumMediterranean region. This test appears to support the idea that inferences about specific evolutionary developments can be made on the basis of a synchronic association. Contrary to most anthropological discourse of the recent decades, the authors maintain that a synchronic association can serve as a sound basis for making inferences about specific evolutionary developments.

Comparing Cultures and Comparing Processes: Diachronic Methods in Cross-Cultural Anthropology

“…Although more limited in scope-not claiming worldwide generalizability-such studies show how comparative archaeological research can be used to discern and analyze events. Korotayev, Kazankov, Dreier, and Dmitrieva (2003) offer a problematic but undoubtedly diachronic analysis of changes in kinship terminology systems in the Circum-Mediterranean region by studying 18 societies, each at two points in time. The largest diachronic study undertaken by anthropological comparativists to date is that of Bradley, Moore, Burton, and White (1990), who use pinpointing not simply to specify the units being compared but to analyze the historical dimension of changes in subsistence patterns in 87 ethnographically attested small-scale societies to compare the effects of colonialism.…”