IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/thpobi/v101y2015icp1-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modeling the genealogy of a cultural trait

Author

Listed:
  • Aguilar, Elliot
  • Ghirlanda, Stefano

Abstract

The mathematical study of genealogies has yielded important insights in population biology, such as the ability to estimate the time to the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of a sample of genetic sequences or of a group of individuals. Here we introduce a model of cultural genealogies that is a step toward answering similar questions for cultural traits. In our model individuals can inherit from a variable, potentially large number of ancestors, rather than from a fixed, small number of ancestors (one or two) as is typical of genetic evolution. We first show that, given a sample of individuals, a cultural common ancestor does not necessarily exist. We then introduce a related concept: the most recent unique ancestor (MRUA), i.e., the most recent single individual who is the earliest cultural ancestor of the sample. We show that, under neutral evolution, the time to the MRUA can be staggeringly larger than the time to MRCA in a single ancestor model, except when the average number of learning opportunities per individuals is small. Our results point out that the properties of cultural genealogies may be very different from those of genetic genealogies, with potential implications for reconstructing the histories of cultural traits.

Suggested Citation

  • Aguilar, Elliot & Ghirlanda, Stefano, 2015. "Modeling the genealogy of a cultural trait," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 1-8.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:101:y:2015:i:c:p:1-8
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2014.12.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580914001099
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tpb.2014.12.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Russell D. Gray & Quentin D. Atkinson, 2003. "Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin," Nature, Nature, vol. 426(6965), pages 435-439, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kobayashi, Yutaka & Wakano, Joe Yuichiro & Ohtsuki, Hisashi, 2018. "Genealogies and ages of cultural traits: An application of the theory of duality to the research on cultural evolution," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 18-27.
    2. Takahashi, Takuya & Ihara, Yasuo, 2022. "Application of a Markovian ancestral model to the temporal and spatial dynamics of cultural evolution on a population network," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 14-29.
    3. Kobayashi, Yutaka & Kurokawa, Shun & Ishii, Takuya & Wakano, Joe Yuichiro, 2021. "Time to extinction of a cultural trait in an overlapping generation model," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 32-45.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Romain Wacziarg, 2009. "The political economy of ethnolinguistic cleavages," Working Papers 2009-17, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales.
    2. Victor Ginsburgh & Shlomo Weber, 2020. "The Economics of Language," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 348-404, June.
    3. Joseph Flavian Gomes, 2020. "The health costs of ethnic distance: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 195-226, June.
    4. Aparicio Fenoll, Ainoa & Kuehn, Zoë, 2016. "Education Policies and Migration across European Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 9755, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Ainhoa Aparicio Fenoll & Zoë Kuehn, 2017. "Compulsory Schooling Laws and Migration Across European Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(6), pages 2181-2200, December.
    6. Stanisz, Tomasz & Drożdż, Stanisław & Kwapień, Jarosław, 2023. "Universal versus system-specific features of punctuation usage patterns in major Western languages," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    7. Desmet, Klaus & Ortuño-Ortín, Ignacio & Wacziarg, Romain, 2012. "The political economy of linguistic cleavages," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 322-338.
    8. Petroni, Filippo & Serva, Maurizio, 2010. "Measures of lexical distance between languages," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(11), pages 2280-2283.
    9. Ginsburgh, Victor & Weber, Shlomo, 2015. "Linguistic Distances and their Use in Economics," CEPR Discussion Papers 10640, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Matthew J. Baker, 2021. "Foundations of the Age-Area Hypothesis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17, December.
    11. Simone Pompei & Vittorio Loreto & Francesca Tria, 2011. "On the Accuracy of Language Trees," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(6), pages 1-11, June.
    12. Stelios Michalopoulos, 2012. "The Origins of Ethnolinguistic Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1508-1539, June.
    13. Carl Müller-Crepon & Yannick Pengl & Nils-Christian Bormann, 2022. "Linking Ethnic Data from Africa (LEDA)," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 59(3), pages 425-435, May.
    14. Stelios Michalopoulos, 2008. "The Origins of Ethnolinguistic Diversity: Theory and Evidence," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0725, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    15. Nico Neureiter & Peter Ranacher & Nour Efrat-Kowalsky & Gereon A. Kaiping & Robert Weibel & Paul Widmer & Remco R. Bouckaert, 2022. "Detecting contact in language trees: a Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, December.
    16. Victor Zitian Chen & John Cantwell, 2022. "An evolutionary view of institutional complexity," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 1071-1090, July.
    17. Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Shlomo Weber, 2017. "Peripheral diversity: transfers versus public goods," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 787-823, December.
    18. Luke J Matthews & Sam Passmore & Paul M Richard & Russell D Gray & Quentin D Atkinson, 2016. "Shared Cultural History as a Predictor of Political and Economic Changes among Nation States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-18, April.
    19. Marcelo A Montemurro & Damián H Zanette, 2011. "Universal Entropy of Word Ordering Across Linguistic Families," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(5), pages 1-9, May.
    20. Taraka Rama, 2013. "Phonotactic Diversity Predicts the Time Depth of the World’s Language Families," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(5), pages 1-9, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:101:y:2015:i:c:p:1-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/intelligence .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.