A Worldwide Evolutionary Classification of Cultures by Subsistence Systems [and Comments and Reply]

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Abstract

Comparative ethnology now provides the data by which all known cultures can be usefully arrayed in an evolutionary series on the basis of their subsistence systems. The isight is an old one, but the massing of evidence about expressive,as well as societal and ecological, patterns which the computer makes possible lends new weight to an evolutionary treatment of cultural variation. The main data for our experiment consisted of the codings for food production from the entire sample of Murdock's Ethmographic Atlas (1967)-some 1,300 cultures, most if not all the kinds of cultures on record. We present a parsimonious ordering of this sample by means of clustering the data on subsistence into types, thereby making a test of the energy theory of culture. The subsistence classes conform to the theoretical requirements set forth by Sahlins, Services, and others. They show, first, a stepwise set of general levels of increasing organization, productivity, and energy transformation, from Collection through Industry, and, second, specific variation of the grand classes on a regional basis. Each step in both the general and the specific evolution is a step in a nested hierarchy of niche and habitat exploitation and organized resource use. Moreover, the general and the specific regional evolutionary classes suggested codefine most of the known historic traditions of culture. The text argues the rationale of the classifications and discusses memberships.

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