Diffusionism — British, German and American schools

Why diffusionism challenged unilinear evolution

Diffusionists argued that major inventions are rare; cultural similarity usually comes from contact, migration or trade — not from every society inventing the same things independently.

• Core premise: humans are relatively uninventive; a major trait arises once (or a few times) and then spreads.
• This rejected Psychic Unity of Mankind as a sufficient explanation for parallel ladders of progress.
• Change could be progressive or degenerative; traits stick when they meet local need, prestige of carriers, and successful competition with older practices.
• Adoption is regulated by communication (trade, intermarriage), active need, and the status of those bringing the trait.

British school (hyper-diffusion / heliocentric)

• Core claim: ancient Egypt was the single ultimate source of many worldwide monuments, techniques and high cultural achievements.
• G.E. Smith linked megaliths and related forms worldwide to Egyptian prototypes carried by small seafaring groups (crude local imitations of temples, pyramids, burial forms).
• Hydraulic theme: arid irrigation demanded central organisation; water managers became god-kings; navigation and mummification then diffused outward.
• Primary diffusion reached near neighbours; secondary diffusion was carried further by peoples who had already received Egyptian traits.
• W.J. Perry (The Children of the Sun, 1923) argued sun-god worship centred on Egyptian pharaohs as sun incarnations and spread from that hearth.
• W.H.R. Rivers was a more moderate diffusionist: Melanesian loss of boat-building despite island life suggested past knowledge lost through isolation; multiple Australian burial rites suggested successive small male migrations that preserved burial custom while adopting local language.

German school (Kulturkreis / culture-historical)

• Traits arise in a few culture circles (Kulturkreise) and spread by migration; history is read as layered complexes, not one Egyptian source.
• Friedrich Ratzel: advanced groups spread traits by migration and conquest; criterion of form (quality) — non-functional structural likeness (decorative arrow feathers with no mechanical need) suggests historical connection.
• Leo Frobenius: criterion of quantity — many shared non-functional traits raise the probability of historical contact (houses, shields, masks, myths).
• Fritz Graebner applied both criteria to map culture layers in Oceania from simpler Tasmanian-type complexes toward Polynesian patrilineal forms.
• Wilhelm Schmidt ordered migrations into Primitive, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary circles; Urmonotheismus claimed earliest religion was All-Father monotheism later corrupted into polytheism.

American school (culture area)

• Rejected grand armchair maps; mapped local geographic areas where fieldwork showed shared traits spreading by imitation and neighbour contact.
• Clark Wissler: culture areas of Native North America keyed to dominant subsistence (for example maize regions); culture centre holds traits in purest form; age-area principle — widest spread trait is oldest if diffusion is even.
• A.L. Kroeber: salvage ethnography of California tribes; refined area maps; culture climax (peak expression, e.g. Paris for France) versus intensity of emphasis on traditions.
• Kroeber’s configuration idea: culture is a patterned, shared arrangement of knowledge, not a random bundle; superorganic culture shapes individuals more than “great men” drive history (simultaneous inventions when culture is ready: Newton/Leibniz; Darwin/Wallace).

Major criticisms

• British school: extreme ethnocentrism (non-Western peoples cast as uninventive); conjectural history; material bias ignoring belief and value diffusion.
• German school: culture circles as unverifiable mental maps; migration asserted without explaining causes; quality/quantity criteria remain subjective.
• American school: risk of environmental determinism; age-area assumes uniform speed of spread, which barriers and social friction contradict.