Modeling the spatial dynamics of culture spreading in the presence of cultural strongholds

TY - JOUR

T1 - Modeling the spatial dynamics of culture spreading in the presence of cultural strongholds

AU - Lizana, George Ludvig

AU - Mitarai, Namiko

AU - Sneppen, Kim

PY - 2011/6/28

Y1 - 2011/6/28

N2 - Cultural competition has throughout our history shaped and reshaped the geography of boundaries between humans. Language and culture are intimately connected and linguists often use distinctive keywords to quantify the dynamics of information spreading in societies harboring strong culture centers. One prominent example, which is addressed here, is Kyoto's historical impact on Japanese culture. We construct a minimal model, based on shared properties of linguistic maps, to address the interplay between information flow and geography. We show that spreading of information over Japan in the premodern time can be described by an Eden growth process with noise levels corresponding to coherent spatial patches of sizes given by a single day's walk (∼15 km), and that new words appear in Kyoto at times comparable to the time between human generations (∼30 yr).

AB - Cultural competition has throughout our history shaped and reshaped the geography of boundaries between humans. Language and culture are intimately connected and linguists often use distinctive keywords to quantify the dynamics of information spreading in societies harboring strong culture centers. One prominent example, which is addressed here, is Kyoto's historical impact on Japanese culture. We construct a minimal model, based on shared properties of linguistic maps, to address the interplay between information flow and geography. We show that spreading of information over Japan in the premodern time can be described by an Eden growth process with noise levels corresponding to coherent spatial patches of sizes given by a single day's walk (∼15 km), and that new words appear in Kyoto at times comparable to the time between human generations (∼30 yr).

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevE.83.066116

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevE.83.066116

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 21797450

SN - 2470-0045

VL - 83

SP - 066116

JO - Physical Review E

JF - Physical Review E

IS - 6

ER -