Cultural Diversity Highest in Resource-Rich Areas, Study Says

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

March 17, 2004

We may rightfully beat our drums and toot our horns: No species come close to the wealth of culture that humans boast. We have different religions, marriage systems, languages, and dances.

"Humans are a very young species with very little genetic diversity, yet we've got enormous cultural diversity that other species really don't have," said Mark Pagel, a professor of evolutionary biology in the School of Animal and Microbial Sciences at the University of Reading in England.

But what explains our extreme cultural diversity?

In an article in this week's issue of the science journal Nature, Pagel and Ruth Mace, an anthropologist at the University College London, argue that our cultural evolution is driven in large part by a desire to control resources.

"Humans have a proclivity for drawing a ring around themselves and say[ing], 'This is my territory and I'm going to exclude others from occupying it, '" Pagel said. "That leads to different cultures arising through the usual processes of diversification and drifting apart when they're isolated from each other."

Cultural Erosion?

It may seem strange to talk about our great cultural diversity at a time when many of us fear that a cultural homogenization is sweeping the world.

From Manila to Miami, people seem to eat the same foods, watch the same films, and drive the same cars. Languages are being lost at a rate of one per day.

Pagel doesn't deny that a cultural erosion is taking place. But, he says, it's happened far less than it appears. In fact, unless they're tempted financially to move and assimilate into a new culture, most people prefer to stay where they are and continue doing what they have always done.

"What's remarkable is how little movement we have seen in people, given the ability we have to move people," he said. "It's the natural tendency for cultures to be quite cohesive and exclusive that we want to draw attention to."

The study found that human cultures distribute themselves around the world in patterns similar to animal species. In animals, a trend known as Rapaport's rule holds that the density of species is highest in the equatorial regions and declines steadily toward the poles.

Different languages—the standard by which the study differentiates cultures—are spoken every few square miles in some equatorial areas, while less climatologically hospitable regions have few languages.

Punishing Outsiders

Some 700 to 1,000 different languages, about 15 percent of the total on Earth, are spoken in Papua New Guinea. By comparison, only 90 languages are spoken in China.

"When resources are abundant, it is possible for a small group of humans to survive, while in areas where resources are not very abundant people have to range over large areas to meet their daily needs, and that seems to homogenize cultures, because they're constantly coming into contact with other people," Pagel said.

But how come humans don't form one large and homogenous cultural group in ecologically rich areas like Papua New Guinea?

Pagel says that's because humans display forms of social behavior that favor living in small groups, such as rewarding cooperation, punishing those who deviate from the norms, and being wary of outsiders.

"In trying to control resources and excluding others from using them, we have developed [sophisticated group behaviors such as] hunting … and warfare," he said. "These things require enormous amounts of cooperation, coherence, and communication among individuals."

It may also be a matter of choice. While our genes are transmitted vertically and can't be chosen, cultural traits can be accepted or rejected. However, most people still get their traits from their ancestors rather than other cultures.

"People tend to speak the same language as their parents, and have the same political and religious beliefs," Pagel said.

Potential Transition

Although our cultural diversity is still strong, it is perhaps only a fraction of what it was, say, 10,000 years ago, when agriculturists moved out of Mesopotamia and replaced hunter-gatherer cultures in Europe and elsewhere, wiping out languages in the process.

"There are only about 50 languages spoken in Europe today," Pagel said. "If it hadn't been for the advance of the agriculturists, we would probably have greater linguistic diversity in Europe, and probably greater cultural diversity too."

We may be in another state of transition now. While some experts suggest that mass migrations of people moving from poor regions to rich areas will dent our cultural diversity, Pagel is not so sure.

"Whether things will change in the next hundred years and we'll have one big homogenous world, we can't really say," he said. "But we can say that, despite the potential for movement, really very little has happened so far."

After all, Pagel says, you can walk down a street in Manhattan and find three generations of Italian speakers. Walk a few blocks more, and people are speaking Chinese. "The cultural differences in Manhattan still remain," he said.

For more on language and culture, scroll down for related stories and links.