The belief or doctrine that all human beings share a similar mental makeup and that similarity between cultures is evidence of similar causative agents. What constitutes such agents has been a source of controversy in anthropology (broadly speaking it amounts to biological commonalities versus cultural diffusion. While cultures might evolve at different speeds, they are destined to move through the same ‘stages’. The doctrine itself is generally accepted in contemporary anthropology, but no longer plays a substantive role in theory building. Its historical roots date back at least to the ancient Greeks, but found its expression in anthropology through the writings of Adolf Bastian (1826-1905), the father of German anthropology. It was taken up by Frans Boas (1858-1942), the father of American anthropology and in the UK by Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), the father of British anthropology. .
See Anthropological veto, Anthropology, Cultural evolution, Emic-etic distinction, Evolutionary psychology, Relativism (or cultural relativism), Universalism