The Life Cycle of Life Styles: Projecting the Course of Local Evolutionary Sequences

Abstract

With few exceptions, researchers in culture evolutionary theory have given short shrift to the data and issues of specific, as opposed to general, evolution (i.e. to process and sequences that are bound to specific spatial contexts vs. those that are, or are presumed to be, hologeistic). In this paper, data from two disparate and well-delimited sequences, Pre-Norman England and Lowland Classic Maya (data assembled respectively by Rob ert Carneiro and S. G. Morley), are fitted to the same math ematical model, the hyperbolic tangent variant of the " lazy-S" curve. It is demonstrated that growth and development in these two sequences, though clearly in different phases, is adequately epitomized by that function, when suitable parameters are es timated empirically. This paper is programmatic, in the sense that it provides an example of how one might do systematic statistical comparisons of growth processes between specific evolutionary sequences, and how these might contribute to general evolutionary theory. In this connection, the paper contains a brief discussion of growth-rate research in other social science areas. [Cultural evolution; culture patterns; mathematical models.]

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