• All humans from each era had their characteristics, from differences in tools, and customs to their differences in lifestyle.

• To a social scientist, culture is the specialized behavioral patterns, understandings, adaptations, and social systems that summarize a group of people’s learned way of life.

• Cultural differences can represent the difference between a human from the stone age to a human living in New York, but it can also be as subtle as the “feel” of urban Paris, Moscow and New York.

2.1 Components of Culture

• Culture is taught, an individual would learn its behavioral patterns, its environmental and social perceptions.

• Many different cultures exist within a given area and subcultures can be distinguished from the wider society by their cultural patterns.

• Culture traits range from the language spoken, the tools they use and the beliefs they practice.

  • One can be a part of two distinct cultures such as believing in Christianity and speaking Spanish

• Cultures do not exist in isolation; they all overlap and are interrelated in a way.

2.2 Interaction of People and Environment

• The interrelations of people to an environment, their perceptions and utilization of it, and their impact are all studied by cultural ecologists.

• Environments as Controls

  • The environment limits the human use of an area but it should not be seen as absolute as humans have made factories in every corner of the world

  • Geographers also believe in cultural autonomy which states that cultures are equally likely to build any set of cultural traits no matter what environmental circumstances are like.

• Human Impacts

  • Humans always modify their environment and cater it to their cultural landscape.

    • The cultural landscape represents how a given culture modified and left its record on the land.

  • Humans have used fire for thousands of years to their advantage.

    • Previously the Native Americans and people in East Africa would burn down forests to increase grazing areas, they burned down millions of trees which led to the rise of the grasslands. Now that the fires are banned, forests are re-growing over the former grasslands.

  • Extinction caused by humans

    • It is estimated that 40% of large African animals have disappeared due to over-hunting which led to extinction.

    • ⅔ of the mammals in North America disappeared 11,000 years ago due to hunters migrating and spreading across the planet.

  • All in all, humans have disturbed environments for thousands of years which has led to the extinction of thousands of species and tons of land that is now inhabitable.

2.3 Roots of Culture

• 11,000 years ago the earth was covered in ice sheets and as it began to retreat, animals, plants, and humans began to migrate across the planet

  • Humans were all hunter-gatherers and people depended on the year-round availability of food and animals. This opened up more opportunities for humans to spread out and capitalize on the new land.

  • This birthed sub-cultures and each settlement used their own tools to exploit the resources that they depended on.

    • Today the African Bushmen and the Inuit people are both referred to as “hunter-gatherers” even though they have almost no similarities.

  • 9000 years ago, there were about 5-10 million humans who lived in families of 20-40 people.

  • By the end of the ice age, language, religion, long-distance trade, permanent settlements, and social stratification within groups were developed and cultural differences were more apparent.

2.4 Seeds of Change

• The new ecological conditions brought forests and warmer weather and increased the population.

  • The carrying capacity of a region depends on the available technology which was quite low for the hunter-gatherers.

  • As humans made the transition from gathering food to producing it, populations drastically grew as more people could be supported with this method.

• Agricultural Origins and Spread

  • Animal domestication and the agricultural revolution changed the way humans lived forever.

    • Each region had their own uses for their crops and animals which also created distinct human cultures.

    • Women became the leaders in food preparation and food gathering.

• Neolithic Innovations

  • This was a stage of cultural development in which an advanced set of tools and technologies were created to manage the expanding population and agriculture.

  • The entire planet moved at a different pace but this period did change the way each individual settlement lived.

  • Humans began using metal instead of stones and they modified plants, terrain and water.

    • Essentially stopped adopting and began shaping.

  • Laws and Religions began to form as the population immensely grew.

2.5 Culture Hearths

• Culture hearth is used to describe the centers of innovation and invention.

  • Several culture hearts emerged during the Neolithic period.

    • Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley were prominent cultural hearths

  • Each hearth developed or adopted mathematics, astronomy, and the calendar

    • Writing appeared 5,000 years ago in Egypt

• Cultural convergence is where humans share their technology, organizational structures and cultural traits

2.6 The Structure of Culture

• Cultures are hard to understand unless one is a part of it

  • Anthropologist Leslie White thinks to analyze one should understand their ideological, technological and sociological traits.

• The ideological subsystem consists of ideas, beliefs and knowledge.

• The technological subsystem consists of the material objects, the use and technique of said objects and how people live with them.

• The sociological subsystem is about the patterns of interpersonal relations and social rituals in a culture.

  • Whether the interaction is professional, political or religious

2.7 Culture Change

• Cultures are always changing, they may be small but over time the changes are drastic.

  • The change from a hunter-gatherer to a farmer to an office worker.

• Innovation

  • Innovations generally have few consequences but the way they are adopted by humans is what brings change.

    • Ex. Computers, iPhones, farming

  • Premodern and traditional societies are not very innovative because they resist change as it can bring a new reality of different socioeconomic conditions.

  • In modern societies, innovation has become extremely common with new inventions changing the world every so often.

• Diffusion is the process by which an idea or innovation is transmitted from one individual or group to another across space.

  • Expansion diffusion is when the spread of a culture trait is adopted after contact with those who do practice the trait.

    • It usually follows the same pattern where one begins to adopt the idea and the adopter begins to pass on the ideology.

    • Ex. Religion expanding over a continent.

  • Contagious diffusion is when one area practices something and it spreads to a neighboring area.

  • Hierarchical diffusion is when an idea transfers from a larger area to a smaller area or between more important individuals before the general population

    • Previously this was with religion but now it can be between leaders in a certain field sharing inventions related to their respective fields.

  • Relocation diffusion is when innovation is brought to new areas by migrating people who possess it.

  • For people to accept change and innovation they need to carry the same beliefs and traditions

    • Ex. America welcomed the industrial revolution while Asia did not.

  • Cultural change takes time and societies do not accept it for numerous reasons such as the lack of knowledge or if it violates cultural norms

  • Acculturation and Cultural Modification

    • A culture may adopt the values of another dominant culture, this is called acculturation

      • Ex. An immigrant population taking on the cultural norms and values of the group it arrived at.

      • This has caused ⅓ of the world’s cultures and languages to vanish.

2.8 Contact Between Regions

• It is estimated that 10% of the cultural items in any society are traceable to innovations created by its members that the other 90% of the societies have adopted through diffusion.

• With the world being more and more connected it has brought a rapid spread of innovation and cultural adaptation across the planet

• There are barriers to diffusion such as social customs, political restrictions and religious taboos.