Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
who live in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Tahiti. You could well end up with at least a couple of dozen
items in each case.
Comparison of those lists would reveal
cultural universals,
which are categories of traits that
all cultures share, but whose specific manifestations vary from one culture to the next. Vari-
ous cultural universals are given in Table 13-1. Language is an example. You speak at least
one language. So do people in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Tahiti. Indeed, every culture has
one, so it can be considered a universal. All told, an estimated 6,500 languages are spoken
today. Likewise, religion is a universal, and hundreds, if not thousands, of them can be found
throughout the world. You can add to them dress, architecture, sport, and all of the other uni-
versals, each of which come in many specific varieties. If you count all of the ways different
human groups have combined different manifestations of these universals, then you have the
number of cultures on Earth. And apparently, that number is about 15,000.
Isolating people
Isolation is another reason why we have so many cultures. Communication generally breeds
cultural homogeneity. In other words, the more people that share information and ideas, the
more alike they tend to be. Geographic isolation, in contrast, breeds differences. Take a large
number of people who have the same culture, divide them into, say, four groups that are isol-
ated and completely out of touch with each other, and over time they are likely to go their sep-
arate ways, culturally speaking. Basically, as humans migrated eons ago from their common
ancestral homeland, to ultimately occupy the world, that is what happened.
