Supplrmentary materials of "THE CULTURAL NARRATIVE GENOME OF ROZAFA. A PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF THE MOTIF OF IMMUREMENT IN ALBANIAN AND BALKAN TRADITIONS"

<b>Background</b>: The Albanian legend of Rozafa represents one of the most widely distributed variants of the "foundation sacrifice" motif (ATU 780, Thompson S260) in the Balkans. While previous studies have analyzed individual variants through qualitative interpretation, no systematic quantitative comparison has been conducted to identify the specific narrative elements that distinguish the Albanian tradition from neighboring Balkan variants.<b>Methods</b>: We applied phylogenetic methods borrowed from evolutionary biology to analyze 100 variants of the foundation sacrifice motif (80 Albanian, 20 Balkan). Each variant was coded as a binary sequence across 90 narrative criteria, creating a "cultural genome" matrix (100×90). We calculated pairwise similarities using Jaccard coefficients and Hamming distances, constructed phylogenetic trees using UPGMA and Neighbor-Joining methods, and performed Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify major axes of variation.<b>Results</b>: Albanian variants show high internal coherence (mean Jaccard coefficient = 0.78, SD = 0.11), significantly higher than inter-Balkan comparisons. We identified seven narrative elements that appear almost exclusively in Albanian variants (&gt;85% Albanian vs &lt;10% Balkan): partial body exposure (χ² = 156.3, p &lt; 0.001), breast for nursing (χ² = 168.2, p &lt; 0.001), eye for watching (χ² = 152.7, p &lt; 0.001), hand for caressing (χ² = 149.1, p &lt; 0.001), milk symbolism (χ² = 171.4, p &lt; 0.001), maternal grief (χ² = 143.8, p &lt; 0.001), and desire for remembrance (χ² = 89.4, p &lt; 0.001). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that Albanian variants cluster most closely with Serbian variants (mean Jaccard = 0.71) but retain distinct narrative modules centered on post-mortem maternal continuity. PCA showed that 62% of total variance is captured by two components: structural base (42%) and ritual-symbolic dimension (20%), with Albanian variants scoring significantly higher on the ritual-symbolic axis.<b>Conclusions</b>: The Albanian version of the foundation sacrifice motif has evolved a unique cultural signature focused on maternal continuity beyond death, distinguishing it clearly from other Balkan traditions despite sharing a common structural base. This study demonstrates that phylogenetic methods can successfully quantify cultural evolution and identify culturally specific narrative modules in oral traditions.<b>Keywords</b>: phylogenetic culturomics · narrative genome · foundation sacrifice · Rozafa legend · Balkan folklore · quantitative folkloristics · cultural evolution