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

Ludvig Lizana, Namiko Mitarai, Kim Sneppen, and Hiizu Nakanishi
Phys. Rev. E 83, 066116 – Published 28 June 2011

Abstract

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).

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  • Received 20 January 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.066116

©2011 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Ludvig Lizana, Namiko Mitarai, and Kim Sneppen

  • Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

Hiizu Nakanishi

  • Department of Physics, Kyushu University 33, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan

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Issue

Vol. 83, Iss. 6 — June 2011

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