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2015 ; 10
(9
): e0136783
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Pulotu: Database of Austronesian Supernatural Beliefs and Practices
#MMPMID26398231
Watts J
; Sheehan O
; Greenhill SJ
; Gomes-Ng S
; Atkinson QD
; Bulbulia J
; Gray RD
PLoS One
2015[]; 10
(9
): e0136783
PMID26398231
show ga
Scholars have debated naturalistic theories of religion for thousands of years,
but only recently have scientists begun to test predictions empirically. Existing
databases contain few variables on religion, and are subject to Galton's Problem
because they do not sufficiently account for the non-independence of cultures or
systematically differentiate the traditional states of cultures from their
contemporary states. Here we present Pulotu: the first quantitative
cross-cultural database purpose-built to test evolutionary hypotheses of
supernatural beliefs and practices. The Pulotu database documents the remarkable
diversity of the Austronesian family of cultures, which originated in Taiwan,
spread west to Madagascar and east to Easter Island-a region covering over half
the world's longitude. The focus of Austronesian beliefs range from localised
ancestral spirits to powerful creator gods. A wide range of practices also exist,
such as headhunting, elaborate tattooing, and the construction of impressive
monuments. Pulotu is freely available, currently contains 116 cultures, and has
80 variables describing supernatural beliefs and practices, as well as social and
physical environments. One major advantage of Pulotu is that it has separate
sections on the traditional states of cultures, the post-contact history of
cultures, and the contemporary states of cultures. A second major advantage is
that cultures are linked to a language-based family tree, enabling the use
phylogenetic methods, which can be used to address Galton's Problem by accounting
for common ancestry, to infer deep prehistory, and to model patterns of trait
evolution over time. We illustrate the power of phylogenetic methods by
performing an ancestral state reconstruction on the Pulotu variable
"headhunting", finding evidence that headhunting was practiced in
proto-Austronesian culture. Quantitative cross-cultural databases explicitly
linking cultures to a phylogeny have the potential to revolutionise the field of
comparative religious studies in the same way that genetic databases have
revolutionised the field of evolutionary biology.
free
free
free
