Index

Culture

The word culture, from the Latin colo, -ere, with its root meaning "to cultivate", generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity is taken as a defining feature of the genus Homo, though Jane Goodall (The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, 1986) identified aspects of culture among our closest relatives.

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