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Political evolution

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Phylogenetic methods of evolutionary biology can be used to study socio-political variation mapped onto linguistic trees. The range of political complexities in Austronesian societies offers a good test case. See Article p.801

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Figure 1: Extremes of Austronesian political organization.

P. BOURSEILLER/GETTY M. PUDDY/PHOTOLIBRARY

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jared Diamond is in the Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1524, USA. jdiamond@geog.ucla.edu,

    Jared Diamond

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  1. Jared Diamond
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Diamond, J. Political evolution. Nature 467, 798–799 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/467798a

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