PEOPLEhow meaningful such categories were and be careful of assumptions
about the linguistic criteria for ethnic identities. Contemporaries often
reduced ethnic identities to stereotypes and associated them with prej-
udices. It is necessary to recognize the differences between the ethnic
stereotypes used by contemporaries, which are an important expres-
sion of their own attitudes, and the realities of cultural assimilation.
The effects of shifts in population on cultural discontinuity also
need to be qualified by the effects of assimilation. When one group
of people is replaced by another with a different way of life, the change
may be minimized by the effects of cultural transmission through
assimilation, that is, by the extent to which the newcomers adopt the
way of life of the people they replace.