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Other anthropologists believed that cultural innovations, such as inventions, had a single origin and passed from society to society. This theory was known as diffusionism.
In order to study particular cultures as completely as possible, Boas became skilled in linguistics, the study of languages, and in physical anthropology, the study of human biology and anatomy.
He argued that human evolution was characterized by a struggle he called the “survival of the fittest,” in which weaker races and societies must eventually be replaced by stronger, more advanced races and societies.
They also focused on important rituals that appeared to preserve a people’s social structure, such as initiation ceremonies that formally signify children’s entrance into adulthood.
Thus, in his view, diverse aspects of culture, such as the structure of families, forms of marriage, categories of kinship, ownership of property, forms of government, technology, and systems of food production, all changed as societies evolved.
For example, British anthropologists Grafton Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry incorrectly suggested, on the basis of inadequate information, that farming, pottery making, and metallurgy all originated in ancient Egypt and diffused throughout the world. In fact, all of these cultural developments occurred separately at different times in many parts of the world.