An international team of researchers has developed a website at d-place.org to help answer long-standing questions about the forces that shaped human cultural diversity.
D-PLACE – the Database of Places, Language, Culture and Environment – is an expandable, open access database that brings together a dispersed body of information on the language, geography, culture and environment of more than 1,400 human societies. It comprises information mainly on pre-industrial societies that were described by ethnographers in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The team’s paper on D-PLACE is published today in the journal PLOS ONE.
“Human cultural diversity is expressed in numerous ways: from the foods we eat and the houses we build, to our religious practices and political organisation, to who we marry and the types of games we teach our children,” said Kathryn Kirby, a postdoctoral fellow in the Departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Geography at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study. “Cultural practices vary across space and time, but the factors and processes that drive cultural change and shape patterns of diversity remain largely unknown.
“D-PLACE will enable a whole new generation of scholars to answer these long-standing questions about the forces that have shaped human cultural diversity.”
Co-author Fiona Jordan, senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Bristol and one of the project leads said, “Comparative research is critical for understanding the processes behind cultural diversity. Over a century of anthropological research around the globe has given us a rich resource for understanding the diversity of humanity – but bringing different resources and datasets together has been a huge challenge in the past.
“We’ve drawn on the emerging big data sets from ecology, and combined these with cultural and linguistic data so researchers can visualise diversity at a glance, and download data to analyse in their own projects.”
D-PLACE allows users to search by cultural practice (e.g., monogamy vs. polygamy), environmental variable (e.g. elevation, mean annual temperature), language family (e.g. Indo-European, Austronesian), or region (e.g. Siberia). The search results can be displayed on a map, a language tree or in a table, and can also be downloaded for further analysis.
It aims 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.
D-PLACE was developed by an international team of scientists interested in cross-cultural research. It includes researchers from Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human history in Jena Germany, University of Auckland, Colorado State University, University of Toronto, University of Bristol, Yale, Human Relations Area Files, Washington University in Saint Louis, University of Michigan, American Museum of Natural History, and City University of New York.
The diverse team included: linguists; anthropologists; biogeographers; data scientists; ethnobiologists; and evolutionary ecologists, who employ a variety of research methods including field-based primary data collection; compilation of cross-cultural data sources; and analyses of existing cross-cultural datasets.
“The team’s diversity is reflected in D-PLACE, which is designed to appeal to a broad user base,” said Kirby. “Envisioned users range from members of the public world-wide interested in comparing their cultural practices with those of other groups, to cross-cultural researchers interested in pushing the boundaries of existing research into the drivers of cultural change.”
Learn more: Massive open-access database on human cultures created
The Latest on: Open-access database
[google_news title=”” keyword=”open-access database” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Open-access database
- Open-Source Software Securityon April 26, 2024 at 8:00 am
Open-source software security is crucial in today's cloud-native world. Learn about vulnerabilities, dependencies, and tools to improve security in this in-depth blog post.
- Stockholm University signs declaration on open research informationon April 25, 2024 at 5:01 am
Stockholm University is actively working towards an open science system, and as part of this work, the university, represented by President Astrid Söderbergh Widding, has recently signed the Barcelona ...
- New database sheds light on violence in Greek detention facilitieson April 23, 2024 at 12:49 pm
The University of Oxford's Border Criminologies research network have contributed to the first interactive, open-source database of rights violations inside Greek detention centers.
- Vietnam set to issue digital IDs for service access, plans to include foreignerson April 23, 2024 at 11:21 am
Vietnam is set to issue digital ID cards for people to use in interactions with public agencies, complementing the VNeID mobile app.
- Ohio Supreme Court rules state database death records aren’t open to publicon April 20, 2024 at 8:45 am
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the names and addresses in death record databases maintained by state and local departments are not subject to open records law.
- Enhanced Greenspaces Access May Mitigate Cardiometabolic Risk Factors at the Population Levelon April 19, 2024 at 3:51 pm
The following is a summary of the “Association of greenspaces exposure with cardiometabolic risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” published in the March 2024 issue of Cardiology by ...
- Australian researchers launch global misinformation databaseon April 17, 2024 at 6:02 pm
A group of Australian researchers have launched a “world-first” online database to track global policies and regulations around misinformation, which will eventually provide freely accessible ...
- Sydney researchers fight misinformation with a global databaseon April 17, 2024 at 3:58 pm
Researchers from University of Sydney, University of New South Wales and University of Technology Sydney have developed an online database to track policies and regulations from 50 countries dealing ...
- Ohio Supreme Court: Database collection of death information not public recordon April 17, 2024 at 3:38 pm
A statewide database of dead Ohioans with the names and addresses associated with the causes of death is not available to the public via a public records request because it contains “protected health ...
- How to Secure Open Source Software: The Dilemma of the XZ Utils Backdooron April 16, 2024 at 12:48 pm
In late February, a software engineer discovered a backdoor in an open source package that’s heavily used across the Linux ecosystem. This discovery prompted additional scrutiny around the security of ...
via Bing News