text: Disputes While the concept of diffusion is well accepted in general, conjectures about the existence or the extent of diffusion in some specific contexts have been hotly disputed. An example of such disputes is the proposal by Thor Heyerdahl that similarities between the culture of Polynesia and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andes are due to diffusion from the latter to the former—a theory that currently has few supporters among professional anthropologists.
  Contributors
  Major contributors to inter-cultural diffusion research and theory include:
  Franz Boas
  Anne Walbank Buckland
  James Burnett, Lord Monboddo
  Leo Frobenius
  Cyrus H. Gordon
  Fritz Graebner
  A. C. Haddon
  Alice Beck Kehoe
  David H. Kelley
  A. L. Kroeber
  W. J. Perry
  Friedrich Ratzel
  W. H. R. Rivers
  Everett Rogers
  Wilhelm Schmidt
  Grafton Elliot Smith
  E. B. Tylor
  Clark Wissler
  Thomas Friedman
  Cultural appropriation
  Demic diffusion
  Diffusion of innovations
  Meme
  Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
  Frobenius, Leo. Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis. Petermanns Mitteilungen 43/44, 1897/98
  Kroeber, Alfred L. (1940). "Stimulus diffusion." American Anthropologist 42(1), Jan.–Mar., pp. 1–20
  Rogers, Everett (1962) Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, Macmillan Company
  Sorenson, John L. & Carl L. Johannessen (2006) "Biological Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages." In: Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World. Ed. Victor H. Mair. University of Hawaii Press, pp. 238–297. ;
  "Diffusionism and Acculturation" by Gail King and Meghan Wright, Anthropological Theories'', M.D. Murphy (ed.), Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Alabama.