The history and diversity of recordkeeping worldwide is presented in connection with the effect of recordkeeping on social and economic development.

The history and diversity of recordkeeping worldwide is presented in connection with the effect of recordkeeping on social and economic development.

In this article, the authors seek to reevaluate Nolan's (2003) study on the primary determinants of war. They reanalyze his hypotheses with what they claim are more robust measures and methodology. They conclude that there is only a little evidence supporting Nolan's theories, that more productive echnology and higher population density predict war, and that overall ecological-evolutionary and sociopolitical explanations of war are equally supported by empirical data.

This article develops a new measure of religious evolution and uses multivariate statistical techniques to examine correlates of different religious stages. Results suggest that subsistence economy, societal size, and the presence of writing and records are all associated with the evolution toward monotheism.

This paper is an investigation into the relationship between social differentiation as a proxy for societal 'development' and various categories of crime. A positive relationship is interpreted by the author as empirical cross-cultural support for Durkheim's theory that these two factors will increase together as parallel processes of 'sociocultural evolution'.

This study employs factor analysis to develop a settlement pattern scale of cultural complexity. Political, economic, and religious factors are identified and implications for the structure of the cultural system are discussed.

The author sampled 28 nonhierarchical, sedentary (at least partially), and demographically documented societies to examine the presence, size, and use of socially integrative facilities. Examing the ethnographic record from the Human Relations Area Files, the author looked to test the assumption that kivas were intended for communal ritual activity.

Authors contend that many of the differences across the 50 states can be attributed to the degree to which social entities are "tight" (have many strongly enforced rules and little tolerance to deviance) or "loose" (have few strongly enforced rules and greater tolerance for deviance). Significant correlations were found between many state characteristics and tightness-looseness.

This article explores the following questions: What environmental and cultural factors might explain variation in prejudice across cultures? Do these factors explain the intention to vote for nationalist politicians? The authors perform seven studies, focusing on the link between cultural tightness and the rise of prejudice in cultures. They theorize that cultural tightness is positively correlated with the rise of prejudice against people perceived as disrupting the social order. From this theory, they suggest three hypotheses: 1) cultural variation in tightness is related to cultural variation in prejudice, 2) cultural tightness is related to the support for nationalist politicians, and 3) cultural tightness is a link between ecological threats and prejudice. The results support these hypotheses, offering a cultural evolutionary perspective on prejudice.

This study examines pairwise differences between similar cultures in order to minimize cultural variation within the SCCS and reveal possible correlates of cultural complexity. Results suggest that one measure of complexity (government above the community level) is significantly associated with several other variables.