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. 2009 May 5;106(18):7339-44.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0804698106. Epub 2009 Apr 20.

Political complexity predicts the spread of ethnolinguistic groups

Thomas E Currie  1 , Ruth Mace
Affiliations

Political complexity predicts the spread of ethnolinguistic groups

Thomas E Currie et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Human languages show a remarkable degree of variation in the area they cover. However, the factors governing the distribution of human cultural groups such as languages are not well understood. While previous studies have examined the role of a number of environmental variables the importance of cultural factors has not been systematically addressed. Here we use a geographical information system (GIS) to integrate information about languages with environmental, ecological, and ethnographic data to test a number of hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the global distribution of languages. We show that the degree of political complexity and type of subsistence strategy exhibited by societies are important predictors of the area covered by a language. Political complexity is also strongly associated with the latitudinal gradient in language area, whereas subsistence strategy is not. We argue that a process of cultural group selection favoring more complex societies may have been important in shaping the present-day global distribution of language diversity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Distribution of languages in the Old World. (A) Kernel density map of languages of the Old World (created in ArcGIS). Darker colors represent regions of higher language density. (B) Average log language area (black bars) increases with absolute latitude (Lower bound of 10° bands). N represents the number of languages at each band of latitude. Larger language areas are not simply the result of a relatively constant number of speakers being spread out over larger areas as the average number of speakers (white bars) also increases with increasing language area up to 60° of latitude.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Comparison between residual log language area (controlling for all other variables in Table 2) (black) and absolute latitude (white) for (A) levels of political complexity and (B) different subsistence strategies. More politically complex societies have larger language areas and are also found at higher latitudes. Subsistence strategy does not show a consistent relationship between language area and absolute latitude. HG, hunter–gatherer; F, fishing; P, pastoralism; EAg, extensive agriculture; IAg, intensive agriculture.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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