Ralph Linton’s Diffusionist Influence on Pacific Prehistory

Record summary

Mid-century Pacific culture-history debates drew on diffusionist anthropology associated with scholars such as Ralph Linton, whose comparative approach encouraged researchers to explain cultural traits through movements of peoples and ideas. The lead matters because such frameworks formed part of the intellectual background against which Heyerdahl’s South American hypothesis was assessed. It is not a single expedition or discovery, but a traceable scholarly debate through published anthropological works and reviews. Later Pacific archaeology emphasized Austronesian expansion, local development, interaction, and stronger chronological controls.