Cultural Change in Spatial Environments

TLDR

The authors employ a cellular‑automata framework where each cell holds a culture encoded as a bit string, and cultures evolve through local assimilation, random mutation, or territorial expansion. They find that even when assimilation can occur between dissimilar neighbors, cultures remain fragmented; random changes reduce the number of stable regions, expansion of a single culture does not homogenize the area, and geographic barriers such as mountains increase cultural diversity.

Abstract

A cellular automata model is used to study aspects of cultural change in spatial environments. Cultures are represented as bit strings in individual cells. Cultures may change because they become more similar to prevailing nearby cultures, are subject to intrinsic random changes, or expand to previously empty cells. Extending Axelrod's (1997) results, the authors show that assimilation does not lead to a single homogeneous culture even if, unlike in Axelrod's model, cultural assimilation may take place even between neighboring cells with zero similarity; intrinsic changes decrease rather than increase the number of stable cultural regions; and expansion of a single culture in a previously unoccupied territory does not result in a single culture in the entire territory. Geographical features (such as mountains) that are an obstacle to contact between cells increase the number of different cultural regions.