From the foods we eat and the houses we construct, to our religious practices and political organization, to who we can marry and the types of games we teach our children, the diversity of cultural practices in the world is astounding. Yet, our ability to visualize and understand this diversity is limited by the ways it has been documented and shared: on a culture-by-culture basis, in locally-told stories or difficult-to-access repositories. In this paper we introduce D-PLACE, the Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment. This expandable and open-access database (accessible at https://d-place.org) brings together a dispersed corpus of information on the geography, language, culture, and environment of over 1400 human societies. We aim to enable researchers to investigate the extent to which patterns in cultural diversity are shaped by different forces, including shared history, demographics, migration/diffusion, cultural innovations, and environmental and ecological conditions. We detail how D-PLACE helps to overcome four common barriers to understanding these forces: i) location of relevant cultural data, (ii) linking data from distinct sources using diverse ethnonyms, (iii) variable time and place foci for data, and (iv) spatial and historical dependencies among cultural groups that present challenges for analysis. D-PLACE facilitates the visualisation of relationships among cultural groups and between people and their environments, with results downloadable as tables, on a map, or on a linguistic tree. We also describe how D-PLACE can be used for exploratory, predictive, and evolutionary analyses of cultural diversity by a range of users, from members of the worldwide public interested in contrasting their own cultural practices with those of other societies, to researchers using large-scale computational phylogenetic analyses to study cultural evolution. In summary, we hope that D-PLACE will enable new lines of investigation into the major drivers of cultural change and global patterns of cultural diversity.

We present cross-cultural data on the existence o f a pervasive institutional and ideological complex o f male supremacy in band and village sociocultural systems, and we identify warfare as the most important cause o f this complex. We explain the perpetuation o f warfare in band and village society and its interaction with selective female infanticide as a response to the need to regulate population growth in the absence o f effective or less costly alternatives. Our hypothesis is supported by a demographic analysis of 561 local band and village populations from 112 societies.IN THIS PAPER' we (1) confirm the existence of a pervasive institutionalized material and ideological complex of male supremacy in band and village societies; (2) identify the practice of pre state warfare as the most important cause of this complex; (3) explain the perpetuation and propagation of warfare among band and village societies as a response to the need to regulate population growth in the absence of effective or less costly alternatives; (4) relate the complex of warfare and male supremacy to additional widespread cultural phenomena. By warfare we mean all organized forms of intergroup homicide involving combat teams of two or more persons, including feuding and raiding.The primary ethnological evidence for the existence of a pervasive institutionalized complex of male supremacy consists of asymmetrical frequencies of sex-linked practices and beliefs which on logical grounds alone either ought not to be sex-linked or ought to occur with equal frequency in their male-centered and female-centered forms. Certain aspects of this complex are well-known; others are less well-known or have hitherto been viewed as isolated phenomena.Among the more familiar parts of the complex are the male-centered postmarital locality practices and descent ideologies. Three quarters of 1,179 societies classified by Murdock (1967) are either patrilocal or virilocal while only one tenth are matrilocal or uxorilocal (Table I). Postmarital residence is closely associated with control over access to, and the disposition and inheritance of, natural resources, capital, and labor power. The best comparative evidence for male dominance in these spheres consists of the skewed distributions of descent rules. Thus patrilineality occurs five times more frequently than matrilineality (Table I).The interpretation of the statistical imbalance in sex-linked residence and descent rules as evidence for male dominance of the decision-making process responsible for the allocation of domestic resources, capital, and labor power, is strengthened by two remarkable facts: in matrilineal societies avunculocality occurs more frequently than matrilocality, and the logical opposite of avunculocality does not occur at all. The logical opposite of avunculocality is called amitalocality (Murdock 1949: 71). It would involve, if it existed, postmarital residence with wife's father's sister rather than as in the case of avunculocality, residence with husband's mother's brother.The hi...

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It is suggested that matrilocal (uxorilocal) residence is an adaptive re sponse to the disequilibrium that occurs when a virilocal or patrilocal soci ety migrates into an alrcady inhabited region. The sudden immigration will result in external warfare between the migrating and indigenous so cieties. Most of the world's societics (approximately 70 percent) practice patrilocal residence and are characterized by the presence of fraternal interest groups, which have been shown to be conducive to the frequent feuding and internal warfare that also characterizes these societies. In the face of severe external warfare, the chances of successful adaptation would be increased if these societies could cease their feuding and internal war and instead concentrate all their resources against the other society. Matrilocal residence accomplishes this, because the dishersal of males from their natal villages upon marriage results in the breakup of fraternol interest groups. This theory was tested on a probability sample of forty-three so cieties, using rigorous Narollian techniques and several statistical methods. Test results show that, in contrast to patrilocal societies, matrilocal societies tend to have recently migrated and to practice only external warfare. Com monly held rival theories of matrilocality concerning environment and female predominance in subsistence were also tested and failed to pro duce significant correlations.

Melvin Ember (1973) suggests that the living floor area of the average house in a society is a good archeological indicator of patrilocal versus matrilocal residence. This study successfully replicates his findings and suggests the sociological factors that may favor larger households and hence larger living floor areas in matrilocal societies.