Diffusion of the Phoenician Alphabet and Other Ideas in History
While diffusion may appear as a relatively new idea due to its prominence in the analysis of social media and modern information networks, it is an age old phenomenon that applies to the spread of innovations and cultures. Different human civilizations around the world were first connected by long arduous journeys which made cultural and technological diffusion difficult by means other than conquest. The first few civilizations that rose up around the world all rose up around river valleys independently. They had little contact with each other resulting in a wide variety of cultural, ideological, and artistic differences. Gradually they became connected through trade by way of roads and sea. However, some areas were more connected than others. This made them more similar in culture and more technologically advanced as they were able to share ideas quickly.
An interesting example would be the diffusion of the Phoenician alphabet. At a first glance the writing scripts of English, Russian, Arabic, and Hindi all look extremely different. However, they are all descended from the Phoenician alphabet. Ancient Phoenicia was located in the middle of the Fertile Crescent, a region in the modern day Middle-East. It was one of the first places in history to hold human civilization. The Phoenicians were a group of sea-faring people that had extensive contact with Europe through the Mediterranean Sea and with South Asia by way of both land and sea. Most ancient scripts consisted of hieroglyphics or logograms. The Phoenician alphabet was alphabetical as each character denoted a sound/syllable rather than a word or phrase. It was popular in ancient Greece who adopted the system for themselves and added vowels. Later, Rome adopted the Greek script (and also had lots of contact with Phoenicia and its Mediterranean colonies like Carthage). The Roman Empire spread its own derivative of the Phoenician script, the Latin script, across Europe. The script we type in today is descended from this diffusion. On the other side, the Phoenician script found its way to Ancient Persia and India. In India it became the Brahmi script and spread throughout South Asia. From Southern India the derivatives of the Brahmi script spread to South-East Asia as far as Thailand and the Philippines. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rise of European colonialism spread the Latin variant of the Phoenician script around the entire planet.
When we look at this through the lens of diffusion we can effectively analyze certain aspects of this spread. The initial adoption of the Phoenician writing script took place in the Middle East which had large-scale contact with major civilizations across Eurasia and North Africa. This allowed ideas that started within the Middle East cluster to easily spread far and wide. If the adoption occurred in a more closed off civilization, this wide spread would not have occurred. We can identify areas that culturally distinct such as Western Europe, Persia, or China as separate clusters. The Phoenician alphabet did not spread to East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, or the Americas. The Americas had no contact with the old world. Africa below the Sahara desert also had minimal contact with the outside world. The threshold rule states that if a certain amount of your neighbor follows behavior A, then you should as well. In this case not enough neighbors or connections of the Sub-Saharan Africans adopted this writing system. East Asia, on the other hand, had lots of trade and contact with the rest of the world. However, the various Chinese states and other East Asian nations formed a tight cluster with a density greater than the threshold needed for other civilizations/clusters in the network to adopt the Phoenician writing system. So they did not adopt it and they kept their own script.
We can apply this model to other innovations such as the Arabic numeral system which originated in India, spread to the Middle East, and then Europe. This would then spread throughout the world. We can also apply diffusion to more modern history and economics. Trade is an integral part of the modern day diffusion of culture and ideas. Countries that are more open economically tend to have higher gains in technological progress and wealth than countries that are “autarkic”: closed off to the outside world. An example of this is North Korea where the majority of the population is stuck with technology from the 1950s Cold War era due to cutting all but few connections with the outside world. Despite all its neighbors being connected to the outside world, North Korea has yet to bulge. This goes against the threshold rule because there is no fraction of neighbors which follow a behavior that would convince North Korea to open up. North Korea has the infrastructure and technology to be connected but chooses not to. Despite exceptions like this, diffusion theories hold up well in the context of the spread of historical ideas, culture, and innovation.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/alphabet-writing/The-South-Semitic-alphabet
https://math.uh.edu/~shanyuji/History/h-19.pdf
https://www.ancient.eu/phoenicia/
https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2016/369