ABSTRACT
By the word “diffusion” anthropologists identify the process by which culture traits pass from group to group and filter over wide areas from a common point of origin. An extensive and valuable literature has accumulated around the subject. Older workers were inclined to attribute similarities of culture to independent inventions by different peoples. The modern view is that the alteration of a culture is much more likely to result-from borrowing traits and habits than from inventing them. It is known, for instance, that the use of tobacco has diffused from a single source in Middle America to much of North and South America and thence to Europe, Africa, and Asia, albeit with many local changes in the function and form of using it. In the face of such evidence, it is needless to presume the repeated independent invention of the trait of using tobacco, even though the fact of such use be discovered in widely separated parts of world. No attempt will be made here to discuss the many and complex methodological problems of diffusion as they have been perceived by a host of workers. Attention will rather be centred on the social-psychological problem involved in diffusion.
