RESEARCH BASE
Search 3,721 documents across 34 fields — every claim tier-rated by evidence
3,633 are the core, quality-scored corpus (34 lettered sections — see How We Work); the remaining 88 are cross-corpus synthesis documents (68 InterDocs, 12 Connections, 8 Theories) also indexed here.
526 results for "cultural group selection" — page 4 of 27
W_3_07 — San (Bushmen) Rock Art, Trance Dance, and the Oldest Living Culture
The San (Bushmen) of southern Africa represent what may be the oldest continuously surviving cultural tradition on Earth, with genetic evidence placing them at the base of the modern human family tree (mitochondrial DNA
W_2_09 — Ainu Mythology and Bear Ceremonialism
The Ainu are the Indigenous people of Hokkaido (northern Japan), Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, whose cosmological system centers on the concept of kamuy — divine spirits that inhabit all natural phenomena and voluntar
W_5_25 — Silk Road & Ancient Trade Networks
The Silk Road — a term coined by German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877 (Seidenstraße) — refers to the interconnected network of overland and maritime trade routes linking China, Central Asia, the Indian subc
ZH_4_12 — Meteor Showers and Meteorite Veneration
Meteors (shooting stars) and meteorites (the stones that survive to reach Earth's surface) have been objects of wonder, fear, and veneration across human cultures for millennia. Major meteor showers — the Perseids, Leoni
ZH_4_03 — Star Myths and Constellation Stories Across Cultures
Every human culture that has observed the night sky has organized the visible stars into patterns — constellations, asterisms, and star groups — and woven them into narrative frameworks that encode cosmological beliefs,
ZH_4_11 — Astronomical Mythology: Why Stars Were Named and Storied
Every known human culture has projected stories, characters, and meaning onto the stars — transforming patterns of light into mythological landscapes inhabited by gods, heroes, animals, and cosmic forces. Astronomical my
ZH_5_08 — Solstice and Equinox Traditions: Seasonal Markers Across Cultures
The solstices (longest and shortest days) and equinoxes (equal day and night) are the four cardinal points of the solar year — astronomically defined by the Sun reaching its maximum/minimum declination (solstices) or cro
C_1_05 — Dying-and-Rising Deity Pattern
This document examines Dying-and-Rising Deity Pattern, a topic within the Global Traditions research area. Key areas of investigation include Frazer's Original Formulation, The Critical Counter-Argument: Jonathan Z. Smit
C_1_07 — Hero's Journey and the Monomyth
Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" (1949) proposes that the world's mythological narratives share a single underlying structure — the monomyth — in which a hero departs from the ordinary world, undergoes initiatory trial
C_4_11 — Berber/Amazigh Mythology and North African Traditions
The Amazigh (Berber) peoples represent one of North Africa's oldest continuous cultural traditions, with the Tamazight language family classified within the Afro-Asiatic phylum and archaeological presence documented acro
C_5_03 — Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Indigenous knowledge systems represent the longest-running experiments in human survival — the Australian Aboriginal peoples have maintained continuous cultural practice for 65,000+ years, making theirs the oldest living
C_2_10 — Basque Language, Culture, and Serpent Mythology
This document examines Basque Language, Culture, and Serpent Mythology, a topic within the Global Traditions research area. Key areas of investigation include Euskara — Europe's Last Language Isolate, Linguistic Features
ZC_3_14 — Globalization: Flows, Frictions, and Fragmentation
Globalization refers to the intensification of worldwide social, economic, political, and cultural interconnections — the increasing flow of capital, goods, services, people, ideas, information, and cultural forms across
ZC_4_17 — Food Anthropology: Culture, Identity, and Power at the Table
Food anthropology examines how the production, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food encode cultural meaning, reinforce social hierarchies, and express identity. Claude Lévi-Strauss proposed the "culinary tr
T_4_07 — Social Identity Theory and Prejudice
Social Identity Theory (SIT) explains how individuals derive self-concept from group memberships and how this drives intergroup behavior — including prejudice, discrimination, and conflict. Developed by Henri Tajfel and
T_4_20 — Cult Psychology & Thought Reform
Cult psychology examines the mechanisms by which high-demand groups — religious, political, therapeutic, or commercial — recruit, indoctrinate, retain, and sometimes harm members through systematic thought reform techniq
T_2_21 — Collective Trauma Psychology
Collective trauma refers to the psychological impact of traumatic events experienced by entire communities, populations, or cultural groups — events such as genocide, slavery, colonialism, war, natural disasters, and pan
B_5_12 — Cognitive Science of Monster Concepts: Why Humans Invent Creatures
Why do all human cultures independently generate remarkably similar monster concepts — predatory hybrids, shape-shifters, reanimated corpses, giant serpents, invisible watchers? Cognitive science offers a compelling fram
B_4_09 — Skin-Walker, Wendigo, and Indigenous Predatory Spirits
Indigenous North American spiritual traditions include powerful predatory spirit entities whose cultural significance, cosmological depth, and moral weight far exceed their common (and often distorted) depictions in popu
B_1_11 — Fertility Deities and Earth Mothers: Demeter, Freya, Pachamama
Fertility deities and earth mothers — divine figures governing agricultural abundance, human reproduction, and the regenerative cycles of the earth — constitute one of the earliest and most enduring theological categorie
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