Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Cultural geography
is the field that seeks to describe and analyze the distribution of culture over
Earth's surface, and is the subject of this chapter. But what can one say about the geographies of so
many culture groups and their cultural traits in one chapter? The answer is “very little.” Thus the em-
phasis of this chapter is on key concepts of cultural geography and how they affect the two major
culture traits of religion and language.
Being Different 15,000 Times Over
Nobody knows exactly how many cultures exist on Earth today, but numbers like 15,000 tend
to get thrown around. Whatever the true total, like birds, folk of a feather flock together. That
is, people who are culturally similar tend to live in proximity to each other and in doing so,
form
culture areas
— regions occupied by people who have something cultural in common.
These may be quite large, like the Islamic culture region that extends from Dakar eastward
across Northern Africa, through the Arabian Peninsula and Southwestern Asia. Culture areas
may also be rather small, as in San Francisco's Chinatown, which occupies no more than a
square mile or two.
In the act of practicing their culture, humans often transform the natural landscape into a
cul-
tural landscape,
as when people convert a grassland to a farm. Because culture is diverse, so,
too, are the world's cultural landscapes, which easily rival (and maybe surpass) purely natural
landscapes in their richness and variety (Figure 13-1a and b). Culture therefore distinguishes
people as well as physical regions. In a sense, culture is the spice of life as well as place, dif-
ferentially “flavoring” people and the land they inhabit.
How did we get 15,000 cultures? Assuming human beings started out more or less the same way back
when, then how did we end up so different? The answer is largely in three parts: the diversity of cul-
ture, effects of isolation, and adaptation to new surroundings.
Counting cultural diversity
Culture is extremely broad and complex, affording ample opportunity for people to be different from
each other. Suppose you made a list of all the ways in which you are culturally different from people
