In this article I show how ubiquitous hybridity is in cultures. It is enabled by layers of population movements and contacts since the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa around 50,000 years ago. I demonstrate how hybridization has proceeded in the emergence of creole language varieties and show that the same process has also driven, for instance, the emergence and differential evolution of English and the speciation of Vulgar Latin into the Romance languages. Differences in outcomes are determined by the specificities of the contact ecologies, including population structure, differences in the demographic proportions of the populations in contact and power relations between them, as well as patterns of population growth, among other factors. I argue that hybridity is not unique to languages. It is conspicuous in other domains of culture, including cuisine, music, clothing fashions, and technologies, for example. I submit a uniformitarian approach inspired by evolutionary biology to better understand how hybridization occurs.

中文翻译：

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克里奥尔语出现时的语言杂交

在这篇文章中，我展示了文化中无处不在的混合性。自从智人大约 50,000 年前走出非洲。我展示了杂交是如何在克里奥尔语变体的出现中进行的，并表明同样的过程也推动了例如英语的出现和差异演化以及通俗拉丁语向罗曼语的物种形成。结果的差异取决于接触生态的特殊性，包括人口结构、接触人口的人口比例差异和它们之间的权力关系，以及人口增长模式等因素。我认为混合性并不是语言所独有的。它在其他文化领域也很引人注目，例如，包括美食、音乐、服装时尚和技术。