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Essay
Nature 456, 877 (18 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/456877a; Published online 17 December 2008
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Organic Chemistry & Chemical Biology
- Indian Institute of Chemical Biology
- Kolkata India
Director of Bioinformatics
- University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
- Johannesburg, South Africa
Being human: Migration: An engine for social change
Peter J. Richerson1 & Robert Boyd2
- Peter J. Richerson is in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA.
Email: pjricherson@ucdavis.edu - Robert Boyd is in the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Email: rboyd@anthro.ucla.edu
Abstract
The movement of people into societies that offer a better way of life is a more powerful driver of cultural evolution than conflict and conquest, say Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd.
As cultural evolutionists interested in how societies change over the long term, we have thought a lot about migration, but only recently tumbled to an obvious idea: migration has a profound effect on how societies evolve culturally because it is selective. People move to societies that provide a more attractive way of life and, all other things being equal, this process spreads ideas and institutions that promote economic efficiency, social order and equality.
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