{"id":2062,"date":"2013-02-14T09:23:04","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T14:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=2062"},"modified":"2013-02-14T09:26:11","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T14:26:11","slug":"2062","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2013\/02\/14\/2062\/","title":{"rendered":"Memes and Genes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/files\/2013\/02\/how-folk-tale-evolved-biology_64031_600x450.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2063\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/files\/2013\/02\/how-folk-tale-evolved-biology_64031_600x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"435\" height=\"549\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/files\/2013\/02\/how-folk-tale-evolved-biology_64031_600x450.jpg 435w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/files\/2013\/02\/how-folk-tale-evolved-biology_64031_600x450-237x300.jpg 237w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 435px) 100vw, 435px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2013\/13\/130206-folktale-europe-human-culture-dna-geography-science\/<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Above a link to a fascinating new article about resistance to changing features of a story at a local level. \u00a0Improvisation is not necessarily all it&#8217;s cracked up to be, and I&#8217;m reminded of the cultural conservatism of folklore. \u00a0The upside to its conservatism is the preservation of tales from times past.<\/p>\n<p><em>In a new study, evolutionary psychologist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.psych.auckland.ac.nz\/uoa\/quentin-atkinson\/\">Quentin Atkinson<\/a>\u00a0is using the popular tale of the kind and unkind girls to study how human culture differs within and between groups, and how easily the story moved from one group to another.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Atkinson, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and his co-authors employed tools normally used to study genetic variation within a species, such as people, to look at variations in this folktale throughout Europe.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The researchers found that there were significant differences in the folktale between ethnolinguistic groups\u2014or groups bound together by language and ethnicity. From this, the scientists concluded that it&#8217;s much harder for cultural information to move between groups than it is for genes.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2013\/13\/130206-folktale-europe-human-culture-dna-geography-science\/ Above a link to a fascinating new article about resistance to changing features of a story at a local level. \u00a0Improvisation is not necessarily all it&#8217;s cracked up to be, and I&#8217;m reminded of the cultural conservatism of folklore. \u00a0The upside to its conservatism is the preservation of tales from times past. In a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2065,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions\/2065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}