because several European countries spread their versions of the faith to every
corner of the colonial realm.
Expansion diffusion may be further divided into three specific types.Hierarchical
diffusioninvolves the spreading of ideas or attitudes from urban centers in one
culture to those in another, or in rare instances, even from a single person to others.
Over time, the new cultural elements then diffuse from the urban locations into the
remainder of society, or from the initially “select” group into the larger population.
This type of diffusion is quite common in the spreading and adoption of aspects of
popular culture, like clothing styles, new trends in dance or art, esoteric religious
movements, or in some instances, diseases may spread in this way. Hierarchical dif-
fusion is characteristic of the international fashion industry, where the latest clothing
styles typically appear in fashion shows in Paris and Milan and then are adopted by
designers and consumers in New York, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and other large metro-
politan centers around the world. Even gestures may diffuse in a hierarchical manner.
During World War II, Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s prime minister, began flash-
ing a “V” symbol with his fingers when he was photographed or when he spoke in
public. This gesture stood for “victory,” and the practice quickly caught on among
American politicians once the United States entered the war. The gesture became
widely diffused in the United Kingdom and the United States, and by the end of the
war Americans from all walks of life understood the meaning of this symbol and
used it as a common reminder of the ultimate goal of the war.
Stimulus diffusionis a second type of expansion diffusion. With this kind of dif-
fusion, a culture may not adopt a practice or technology completely, but may adopt
the concept and apply it to their own cultural conditions. Scholars believe that the
transfer of writing from the culture hearth of Mesopotamia to Egypt around
3000 BCE is one of the earliest examples of stimulus diffusion. The Sumerian civi-
lization in Mesopotamia had developed a pictographic writing system some time
earlier, and it appears that knowledge of this system eventually reached the emerg-
ing culture of Egypt. The Egyptians did not adopt the Sumerian system, a script
called cuneiform, but rather were stimulated by this invention to develop their own
pictographic script, which is recognized today as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
It is likely that many early writing systems were constructed as a result of stimulus
diffusion. Probably the most famous example of stimulus diffusion is the construc-
tion of the written script for the Cherokee language in 1821 by Sequoia, who had
seen written English but did not understand it. Showing remarkable ingenuity, he
devised an alphabet to represent spoken sounds in his native Cherokee, and in only
a few months, many of his people had adopted the writing system.
A third pattern of expansion diffusion is represented incontagious diffusion. Here
new cultural elements are adopted rapidly and en masse, spreading through the pop-
ulation like a highly infectious virus. New movements in popular culture often
Cultural Diffusion 81