Population structure and cultural geography of a folktale in
Europe
Author Affiliations
1Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of
Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, New
South Wales 2109, Australia
2School of Culture, History and Language, ANU College of
Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian
Capital Territory, Australia
3Department of Psychology, University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
e-mail: q.atkinson@auckland.ac.nz
Abstract
Despite a burgeoning science of
cultural evolution, relatively little work has focused on the population
structure of human cultural variation. By contrast, studies in human population
genetics use a suite of tools to quantify and analyse spatial and temporal
patterns of genetic variation within and between populations. Human genetic
diversity can be explained largely as a result of migration and drift giving
rise to gradual genetic clines, together with some discontinuities arising from
geographical and cultural barriers to gene flow. Here, we adapt theory and
methods from population genetics to quantify the influence of geography and
ethnolinguistic boundaries on the distribution of 700 variants of a folktale in
31 European ethnolinguistic populations. We find that geographical distance and
ethnolinguistic affiliation exert significant independent effects on folktale
diversity and that variation between populations supports a clustering
concordant with European geography. This pattern of geographical clines and
clusters parallels the pattern of human genetic diversity in Europe, although
the effects of geographical distance and ethnolinguistic boundaries are
stronger for folktales than genes. Our findings highlight the importance of
geography and population boundaries in models of human cultural variation and
point to key similarities and differences between evolutionary processes
operating on human genes and culture.
Received
December 23, 2012.
Accepted
January 15, 2013.
© 2013 The Author(s) Published by the
Royal Society. All rights reserved.
