The authors investigate environmental reasons for cross-cultural variation in the permissibility of cousin marriages. In particular, they test whether higher levels of pathogen prevalence and geographic isolation increase the likelihood that cousin marriage will be allowed. The authors' underlying theory is that cousin marriages provide protective homozygosity against some pathogens and provide more options when mate choices are limited.

The authors investigate environmental reasons for cross-cultural variation in the permissibility of cousin marriages. In particular, they test whether higher levels of pathogen prevalence and geographic isolation increase the likelihood that cousin marriage will be allowed. The authors' underlying theory is that cousin marriages provide protective homozygosity against some pathogens and provide more options when mate choices are limited.

Using a sample of 80 Austronesian societies from the Ethnographic Atlas, the study applies phylogenetic comparative methods to explore the transmission of cultural traits. The authors follow the research question: "for each possible cultural trait in each society, does the geographical (GNN) or phylogenetic nearest neighbor (PNN) best predict the state of the cultural trait?". Cultural traits in the realms of social organization, kinship, marriage, and subsistence were examined. The results show that PNN predicted slightly more traits in comparison to GNN, but there was not much variation between the different economic and social traits. In addition, 43-48% of traits were not predicted by GNN or PNN.

Is grammatical complexity shaped by sociodemographic and sociolinguistic factors? The previously accepted "linguistic niche hypothesis" claims that with an increased number of nonnative speakers in a social group (high exotericity), grammatic complexity decreases; on the other hand, grammatical complexity increases amongst isolated linguistic communities (low exotericity). Through the use of spatiophylogenetic modelling of 1314 languages, the authors of this study do not find adequate evidence to support the linguistic niche hypothesis. Instead, they suggest that linguistic complexity is better predicted by phylogeny and geographic contiguity.

This article compares the relative importance of the sun vs. the moon for a world-wide sample of societies. The contexts in which the sun and the moon are found important are also compared.

This article compares the relative importance of the sun vs. the moon for a world-wide sample of societies. The contexts in which the sun and the moon are found important are also compared.

This dissertation discusses the divided theoretical approach to how reincarnation, animism, spirits, and general religious beliefs occur within societies cross-culturally. Matlock offers evidence to support Tyler, contradicting the generally accepted Durkheimian approach, arguing that the belief about souls and spirits may originate in dreams and other empirical experiences, in turn informing and shaping social organization. Durkheim argued the opposite, claiming that religious beliefs reflect social organization such as the clan and kinship. The author states 33 quantitative hypotheses to be tested using 30 of the first 60 sample societies available in the HRAF Probability Sample.

This paper seeks to identify how different practices of food sharing are related to one another, and the degree to which societies in North and South America may share practices with one another. The authors attempt this by using ethnographic literature to break sharing activities down into their constituent, multi-stage parts, and then comparing the prevalence of these parts and their relationships to one another. The study finds that the presence or absence of a distributor in a sharing activity, and who that distributor is, has a significant effect on how sharing is carried out. On the other hand, linguistic relationships between groups seem to have little impact on their sharing practices, and geographic proximity between groups only seems to have a significant effect on sharing practices in North America.

Using a new measure called "territorial fractionalization" to indicate the extent to which traditional societies are split across current states, the authors of this study propose that fragmentation of ethnic groups and ethnonationalism is key to understanding civil conflict. They find that higher measures of territorial fractionalization significantly predict a higher risk of civil conflict, and that greater increases in territorial fractionalization also predict greater risk of civil conflict. These results hold for a global sample of data from 1945 to 2017, as well as in European and African subsamples dating back to 1886.

Using a sample of 80 Austronesian societies from the Ethnographic Atlas, the study applies phylogenetic comparative methods to explore the transmission of cultural traits. The authors follow the research question: "for each possible cultural trait in each society, does the geographical (GNN) or phylogenetic nearest neighbor (PNN) best predict the state of the cultural trait?". Cultural traits in the realms of social organization, kinship, marriage, and subsistence were examined. The results show that PNN predicted slightly more traits in comparison to GNN, but there was not much variation between the different economic and social traits. In addition, 43-48% of traits were not predicted by GNN or PNN.