Test 1: People and Culture Flashcards | Quizlet

Subsistence farming

Small-scale farming that is primarily meant for personal consumption.

Total Fertility Rate

Calculated as the average number of children per woman per country.

Swidden (Slash and Burn)

The most common form of subsistence agriculture practiced in wetter areas, usually on the margins of tropical forests.

Plantation agriculture

A system of agriculture introduced by European colonialism into Africa.

Sahel

The dry southern margin of the Sahara Desert.

Physical Geography

The study of spatial relationships between physical phenomena and natural systems.

Human Geography

The study of spatial relationships between humans and human phenomena.

Geography (Dr. Chloupek's Definition)

Dr. Chloupek defines the discipline of geography as the study of the earth as the home of humankind.

Geographic Methods

Qualitative and quantitative tools that geographers use.

Earth-Sun Relationship

Natural processes (atmosphere, weather, climates, biomes) are the result of a predictable relationship between the sun, moon, and earth.

Plate Tectonics

The earth’s crust, floating on top of an internal sea of magma, is broken into tectonic plates that interact along their edges, creating physical features like mountains and trenches.

Language and Religion

The Two most influential elements of culture.

Formal regions

Regions that are defined based on one or more shared characteristics

Vernacular regions

Regions that are defied socially as a collection of individuals mental maps in aggregate.

Borderlands

Meeting points or ‘break even’ points in the distributions of human phenomea.

Human Environment Interaction

The ability of the physical environment to affect and steer human behavior and vice versa.

Koppen

Invented the most common climate classification system used today.

Levant

Eastern coast between Egypt and Turkey

Tell

A large pile of rubble resembling a small hill that is the product of human urban building, such as eroded bricks.

Aridity

Defined as a quality of a place if it receives less than $10''$ of rain annually.

Latitude

Degrees of distance north and south defined with the equator as the starting point.

Longitude

Degrees of distance west and east defined off of the prime meridian.

Hemispheres

North and South are divided by the Equator. West and East divided by the combination of the prime meridian and 180 degrees West.

Sub-solar point

The latitude and location on earth where sunshine is directly impacting the earth’s surface.

Global circulation system

Symmetrical pattern of alternating bands of high and low pressure at certain latitudes.

Subtropics

Meaning the areas just outside the tropical latitudes (high latitudes).

Midlatitudes

Halfway between the equator and poles.

Earth's Tilt

The Earth has a tilt of $23.5^\text{o}$ relative to the sun, which causes the amount of daylight and changing of the seasons.

Sub-solar point

The latitude and location on earth where sunshine is directly impacting the earth's surface.

Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn

Imaginary lines found at $23.5^\text{o}$ north and south of the equator.

Arctic and Antarctic circles

Imaginary lines found $66.5^\text{o}$ north and south of the equator.

Low pressure

Creates unstable, ascendant air that forms clouds and produces precipitation.

High pressure

Creates heavy, stable, descending air masses that prevent cloud formation.

Biomes

Regions of unique natural vegetation.

Population density

Average number of people per square unit of land.

Maghreb

Another word used to point to the northern part of Africa.

Civilization

A complex society with agriculture, urbanization, social stratification, written systems of communication, and mastery over the environment.

Domestication

Manipulating wild animals to become docile and herdable, and manipulating wild species of plants to grow in predicable places.

Cuneiform

The first writing system.

Mesopotamia

Translates to 'the land between the rivers'.

Nomadism

Smaller groups of people migrate seasonally across large areas herding domesticated animals.

Nationality

The collective emotional sense of belonging to a nation of people.

Ethnicity

The group of people you share kinship with based on human cultural traits.

Berbers

The most common nomads in North Africa.

Nation state

A country that contains predominantly one ethnic group, where that group's culture is the de facto national culture.

Arabs

Any person whose mother tongue is Arabic and is of Arabic descent.

Turks

An ethnolinguistic group that is the majority population of Turkey.

Persians

Majority population of Iran. They imagine themselves as descendants of the Persian empires.

Kurds

An ethnoregional/ethnolinguistic group who are today a stateless nation, but hope to gain a country soon.

Jews

An ethnoreligious group historically and contemporarily associated with the Levant and today, the country of Israel.

Language families

groups of languages based on their common ancestors.

Proto Language

Parent Language

Afro-Asiatic Language Family

The most common family of languages spoken in SW Asia and N Africa.

Monotheistic

Religion that recognizes one singular deity.

Holy of holies

The place in the first Jewish temple where the Arc of the Covenant was stored.

Islam

Last and youngest of the Abrahamic religions. It has a monotheistic message and follows some of the same principles/traditions as Christianity and Judaism.

Allah

Literally “the God".

Five Pillars of Islam

Shahadah, Salet or Salah, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj

Kabaa

Object toward which Muslims all over the world pray

Constantinople

One of the most important cities in the Levant that was renamed Instanbul

Palestinians

Nationality primarily composed of ethnic Arabs who historically lived in the region of Palestine.

Sovereignty

The right to rule over a territory.

Khoisan

A language family famous for its clicking sounds.

Animism

Religions which see spirit forces in many places, including animate and inanimate objects.

Creole

A stable, formalized pidgin language spoken over generations.

Forward capitals

Capital cities that are moved provocatively close to disputed territory in order to make claims to it on the basis of national security.

Polygamy

Plural marriage.

Colonialism

A policy of gaining authority over foreign territory and the peoples living there.

Mercantilism

An economic strategy that maximizes exports, protects domestic industries from competition through tariffs, and seeks to bolster political power.

Pidgin

A language that first develops for two different groups to communicate with each other.

Pan-African movement

Movement that stressed African political unity in opposition to colonialism, slavery, and neo-colonialism.

Marxism

a socioeconomic theory that stresses the idea of conflict between social classes as inherent to the systems of the day.

Neocolonialism

The idea that modern globalization makes some countries essentially still colonized by economic forces.

Toponyms

Geographic place names.