The Role of Diffusion vs. Local Innovation

Key Insight

For most societies, new technology is acquired more frequently through borrowing from other societies than by local invention, especially for communities not completely isolated. The prevalence of diffusion versus local innovation depends primarily on the technology's inherent ease of invention and a society's geographic proximity to other societies.

Simple inventions, like plant domestication (with at least nine independent origins) and pottery (appearing independently in Japan around 14000 years ago, and in the Fertile Crescent and China by 10000 years ago), often arise straightforwardly from observing and manipulating natural materials. In contrast, complex inventions such as writing (with only a few independent origins, and the alphabet appearing only once) or the wheel, are far more difficult and typically spread via diffusion. The wheel, first attested around 3400 B.C. near the Black Sea with a peculiar three-plank design, diffused rapidly across much of Europe and Asia from a single origin point.

When a new technology emerges, it spreads either through other societies willingly adopting it after observing or learning of its utility, or by societies lacking the invention being overcome by those possessing it. Diffusion mechanisms include peaceful trade (transistors from the US to Japan in 1954), espionage (silkworms from Southeast Asia to the Mideast in 552), emigration (French glass manufacturing techniques spreading across Europe in 1685), and war (Chinese papermaking transferred to Islam in 751 after a military defeat). This transfer can involve copying detailed 'blueprints' or merely stimulating reinvention from 'vague ideas,' as seen when European potters, inspired by Chinese porcelain, independently rediscovered its manufacturing methods centuries later, culminating in works like Meissen porcelain in 1707.