Lullabies are often touted as universal to all human cultures, regardless of time and place. In order to test this axiom, this article examines all 186 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and codes them for the presence or absence of lullabies. The result ultimately hinges on the meaning of the word “lullaby”: when lullabies were defined as a strict and culturally conserved repertoire of songs sung to soothe infants, they were found to be neither a statistical nor even a “near” universal. However, when lullabies were defined as any type of singing used to soothe children, they were a near universal, with 96.8% of societies in the sample coded as having lullabies.

Lullabies are often touted as universal to all human cultures, regardless of time and place. In order to test this axiom, this article examines all 186 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and codes them for the presence or absence of lullabies. The result ultimately hinges on the meaning of the word “lullaby”: when lullabies were defined as a strict and culturally conserved repertoire of songs sung to soothe infants, they were found to be neither a statistical nor even a “near” universal. However, when lullabies were defined as any type of singing used to soothe children, they were a near universal, with 96.8% of societies in the sample coded as having lullabies.

Lullabies are often touted as universal to all human cultures, regardless of time and place. In order to test this axiom, this article examines all 186 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and codes them for the presence or absence of lullabies. The result ultimately hinges on the meaning of the word “lullaby”: when lullabies were defined as a strict and culturally conserved repertoire of songs sung to soothe infants, they were found to be neither a statistical nor even a “near” universal. However, when lullabies were defined as any type of singing used to soothe children, they were a near universal, with 96.8% of societies in the sample coded as having lullabies.

Lullabies are often touted as universal to all human cultures, regardless of time and place. In order to test this axiom, this article examines all 186 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and codes them for the presence or absence of lullabies. The result ultimately hinges on the meaning of the word “lullaby”: when lullabies were defined as a strict and culturally conserved repertoire of songs sung to soothe infants, they were found to be neither a statistical nor even a “near” universal. However, when lullabies were defined as any type of singing used to soothe children, they were a near universal, with 96.8% of societies in the sample coded as having lullabies.

Lullabies are often touted as universal to all human cultures, regardless of time and place. In order to test this axiom, this article examines all 186 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and codes them for the presence or absence of lullabies. The result ultimately hinges on the meaning of the word “lullaby”: when lullabies were defined as a strict and culturally conserved repertoire of songs sung to soothe infants, they were found to be neither a statistical nor even a “near” universal. However, when lullabies were defined as any type of singing used to soothe children, they were a near universal, with 96.8% of societies in the sample coded as having lullabies.

Lullabies are often touted as universal to all human cultures, regardless of time and place. In order to test this axiom, this article examines all 186 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and codes them for the presence or absence of lullabies. The result ultimately hinges on the meaning of the word “lullaby”: when lullabies were defined as a strict and culturally conserved repertoire of songs sung to soothe infants, they were found to be neither a statistical nor even a “near” universal. However, when lullabies were defined as any type of singing used to soothe children, they were a near universal, with 96.8% of societies in the sample coded as having lullabies.

Authors test three explanations as to why bloodletting is such a near-universal therapeutic cultural practice in "the west." Using references from HRAF's database which are then re-coded for colocalization, practitioner, and cultural explanation, they find that bloodletting is practiced therapeutically by many unrelated cultures worldwide; it is heterogeneous in both form and cultural significance across the globe while still fairly ubiquitous in general. Authors posit that the widespread propensity toward bloodletting in human populations is explained by the universality of affecting/affected cognitive mechanisms. After analyzing cultural data in eHRAF, authors incorporated experiments and modeling that further supported this conclusion.

Authors test three explanations as to why bloodletting is such a near-universal therapeutic cultural practice in "the west." Using references from HRAF's database which are then re-coded for colocalization, practitioner, and cultural explanation, they find that bloodletting is practiced therapeutically by many unrelated cultures worldwide; it is heterogeneous in both form and cultural significance across the globe while still fairly ubiquitous in general. Authors posit that the widespread propensity toward bloodletting in human populations is explained by the universality of affecting/affected cognitive mechanisms. After analyzing cultural data in eHRAF, authors incorporated experiments and modeling that further supported this conclusion.

In asking whether or not there are meaningful universals in music, researchers compiled two catalogs – the Natural History of Song (NHS) Ethnography which contains ethnographic descriptions of song performances collected from eHRAF World Cultures, and the NHS Discography, which contains field recordings of performances of dance, healing, love, and lullaby. Using these two corpora, the study tests a variety of hypotheses about the universality and variability of both music behavior and music form. Specifically, whether there are meaningful universals in meaning and sound. The catalog of published sound recordings was analyzed by machine summaries, listener ratings, and manual transcriptions, which revealed that there were identifiable features of songs which could then predict their primary function cross-culturally. The results as a whole revealed that the existence of music is a cultural universal, and that the variation within music can be characterized by three factors assessing the formality, arousal, and religiosity of the song events. They also found that musical behavior varies more within societies than between them.

In asking whether or not there are meaningful universals in music, researchers compiled two catalogs – the Natural History of Song (NHS) Ethnography which contains ethnographic descriptions of song performances collected from eHRAF World Cultures, and the NHS Discography, which contains field recordings of performances of dance, healing, love, and lullaby. Using these two corpora, the study tests a variety of hypotheses about the universality and variability of both music behavior and music form. Specifically, whether there are meaningful universals in meaning and sound. The catalog of published sound recordings was analyzed by machine summaries, listener ratings, and manual transcriptions, which revealed that there were identifiable features of songs which could then predict their primary function cross-culturally. The results as a whole revealed that the existence of music is a cultural universal, and that the variation within music can be characterized by three factors assessing the formality, arousal, and religiosity of the song events. They also found that musical behavior varies more within societies than between them.