World cultures: unity and diversity

Landforms, climate, weather, vegetation, resources, and the world ocean make up parts of the earth's physical environment. However, the study of geography involves much more than a study of the earth's physical features. Just as important is a study of the earth's various cultural features. Every human group leaves a distinct imprint on the earth. The earth's cultural variety finds expression in different population trends, social characteristics, political systems, and economic systems.

Humans can be divided into many ethnic groups — that is large groups of people who have more in common with each other than they do with other peoples. Some ethnic groups differ physically from others. However, all humans are born with certain physical differences. They differ in height, skin, eye and hair color, features of the face and other ways. Often there are no overall physical differences between one ethnic group and another. Other differences between human groups are differences in culture.

Culture is the sum of what a human group acquires through living together, including language, knowledge, skills, art, literature, law, customs, and life styles. When studying about a group's culture, it helps to divide cultural characteristics into two categories — material culture and nonmaterial culture. Material culture includes all the physical objects that people make. Examples of material culture include buildings, clothing, tools, paintings, etc. The ideas of a society — expressed in its language, values, political and economic systems, and so on — make up its nonmaterial culture. Both material and nonmaterial culture tell us a great deal about a society's way of life.

In spite of the differences all human cultures have found the same general ways of living on the land. They have developed some kind of clothing, shelter and methods of preparing food. They all have a spoken language — even though it differs from place to place. Nearly all human groups have developed some kind of art, music, and religion.

Language. Both spoken and written the language makes it possible for people to communicate with each other. Scientists have identified over 3,000 different languages in the world today. Some languages are spoken by relatively small numbers of people. Other languages are spoken by millions of people. They include English, which is the official language of many countries around the world. Most of these languages began in one area and then spread to other parts of the world.

Scholars believe that the thousands of languages spoken today develop from a few common languages. As early people migrated throughout the world and lost contact with other groups, different languages evolved. Languages that have the same origin are called language families. The two largest language families in the world today are the Sino-Tibetan family, spoken mainly in Asia, and Indo-European family, of which English is a part.

Even though most speakers of different languages within the same language family cannot understand each other's languages, certain words are similar. The English word sister, for example, resembles the word for sister in several other Indo-European languages. The French soeur, the German schwester, the Italian sorella, and the Russian sestra reflect common origins.

Language is never static. It always changes and develops. Changes in languages can take place over a relatively short period of time. The most notable recent additions include terms related to technological advances, such as the words computer chip and software.

Art. Like language, art could vary from place to place. Eskimos would carve a face on a piece of driftwood to be used as a fishing float. For a ceremonial dance, West Africans would carve a mask out of wood and decorate it with copper. American Indians would wear ornaments they made out of shells, feathers, and animal bones. The objects out of which different peoples made their art depended on local resources. But the designs could come from people's imagination.

From the tropics to the tundra, humans looked up at the sky and wondered where the stars came from, and what would happen when they died. As each group faced these questions, it began to develop its own religion.

Cultural regions. Geographers divide the world into several cultural regions, or areas in which the people share similar cultural characteristics. They identify the cultural regions of the world in many different ways. The following list reflects one way accepted by geographers — Anglo America, Latin America,

Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Africa South of the Sahara, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.