|
Whether a person eats with their mouth opened or closed is determined by culture. Rules concerning who one is allowed to marry are determined by culture. Even whether or not a handkerchief or tissue is used when a person blows their nose is determined by culture. The concept of culture encompasses everything people do and the way it is done. This is the type of culture that people are most familiar with, the transfer of information by behavioral means. Another culture, biological culture, is what I will deal with here. Biological culture affects the behavior of people through structure of the human body. A person's hair texture, height, skin coloring, and even the shape of the nose are examples of things determined by biological culture. Here we will see how culturally biological factors are determined and how the diversity they create is a survival tool for the people that live on this planet.
The Earth we live on has many different geographical regions: desert, woodland, arctic, beach, tropical, and mountain. Different modes of survival are required in order to survive in the different regions. Materials used for clothing and housing are different and the composition of diet is different according to what natural materials and food the area yields. Physical endurance also varies from region to region. People adapted to living in the desert must be accustomed to the scarcity of water and able to survive on small quantities for long stretches of time, while people living in tropical regions must be able to withstand the constant torments of hurricanes and monsoons. Over time, physical features have become present in man, determined by the geographical region they are born into. This has occured because of adaptive evolution. The longer a person lived in the same general geographical region of the Earth, each generation produced would have slight physical and internal alterations in their genetic makeup that would make survival in that particular region easier. These changes show that man was given adaptive power to use as a survival tool, because without the capability to evolve in accordance with one's surroundings, man as a species would have died out long ago.
Before diverse, or different cultures were realized as a scientific evolutiion in the adaptive ability of man, they were considered to be harmful to human society overall. Racism and ethnocentrism were two popular schools of thought. Each different society claimed to be better than its neighbor. To assess the situation correctly, however, one would have to state that each diverse culture possesses certain physical and mental traits that make it more suited to their particular geographical region.
Each person from a different region possesses their own personal survival tool kit. These survival tool kits are evident in the physical appearance of humans. Skin color is determined by the climate a person lives in. In very warm climates, a person's skin will be very dark. This results from generations upon generations of past occupants' exposure to the sun. Over time the skin produced more and more melanin, the color causing agent in skin that reacts to the sun, as it was brought out by exposure to the sun to protect the skin from overheating and make it more resistant to cancer-causing agents of the sun. In contrast, people from colder climates tend to have lighter skin because the extra protection from heat is not needed.
Another physical aspect of the human body is evident in the shape of a person's nose. For instance, in Africa the nose is wide and flat to make breathing easier in the hot air. The wide, flat structure allows the air to cool some before entering the body. In Europe, the nose is long and thin to allow the colder air of that region to warm. The farther north the area, the longer the nose tends to be, while the farther south the area, the shorter and flatter the nose will be.
So it can be shown how the diverse nations in the world did not develop by accident, or because of inferiority. Diversity is what allows the human race to survive in this varied world.
|
| |
