Wallace Walter Atwood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wallace Walter Atwood (1872 – 1949) was an American geographer and geologist.

Wallace Walter Atwood main contribution was his idea of Global Species Consolidation. He theorized that men follow a set path in their evolution. The first stage is Dispersion, which represents migration from a point of origin. The second stage is Differentiation, which is an adaptation to the physical environment and also the creation of a new culture and language. The third stage is Contact, in which different cultures come into contact for the first time and interact. Warfare and trade change the face of many cultures by forcing them into another language or set of customs. The last stage is Consolidation, which means wide scale political and economic interaction between cultures. This is made possible by free trade agreements and regulatory institutions such as the UN.