Quotes About Culture

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ'S FIRST cover shoot was Grace Slick.

The special issue was heavy reading: two men who ran for president, plus scientists, political activists, economists, historians, and futurists. I believed we also must always listen to the poets—actors, comedians, musical artists, and writers—for they are scholars of human nature and often have the gift of prophecy.

Yes, world history is indeed such an onion!

Why you white man have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little? (asked Yali)

1,000 out of the world's 6,000 languages, crammed into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas

New Guineans old and young routinely eat mice, spiders, frogs, and other small animals that peoples elsewhere with access to large domestic mammals or large wild game species do not bother to eat. Protein

Nearly half of all New Guinea languages have fewer than 500 speakers

Chinese culture is still so great in Japan and Korea that Japan has no thought of discarding its Chinese-derived writing system despite its drawbacks for representing Japanese speech, while Korea is only now replacing its clumsy Chinese-derived writing with its wonderful indigenous han'g?l alphabet.

Veddoid Negritos of Sri Lanka

WHAT CAN ARCHAEOLOGY can tell us

tests of cognitive ability (like IQ tests) tend to measure cultural learning and not pure innate intelligence, whatever that is.

Traditionally, the sole animal raised on a large scale for food in Japan has been the pig; sheep and goats have never been significant, and cattle were raised for pulling plows and carts but not for food. Japanese-raised beef remains a luxury food of the wealthy few, selling for up to $100 per pound.

Children in the New Guinea highlands have the swollen bellies characteristic of a high-bulk but protein-deficient diet. New Guineans old and young routinely eat mice, spiders, frogs, and other small animals that peoples elsewhere with access to large domestic mammals or large wild game species do not bother to eat. Protein starvation is probably also the ultimate reason why cannibalism was widespread in traditional New Guinea highland societies.

The earliest preserved examples of the Etruscan and Roman alphabets are also inscriptions on drinking cups and wine containers.

breeds of dogs were developed and raised for food in Aztec Mexico, Polynesia, and ancient China.

why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents? Those disparate rates constitute history's broadest pattern and my book's subject. While this book is thus ultimately

New signs were created by combining old signs to produce new meanings: for example, the sign for head was combined with the sign for bread in order to produce a sign signifying eat.

Jared Diamond

La historia de las interacciones de los pueblos distintos es lo que configuró el mundo moderno mediante la conquista, las epidemias y el genocidio.

Similarly, throughout human history farmers have tended to despise hunter-gatherers as primitive, hunter-gatherers have despised farmers as ignorant, and herders have despised both.

New Guinea, though it accounts for only a small fraction of the world's land area, encompasses a disproportionate fraction of its human diversity. Of the modern world's 6,000 languages, 1,000 are confined to New Guinea.

human genetic diversity is highest in Africa; perhaps more-diverse humans would collectively produce more-diverse inventions.

Probably all humans lived in bands until at least 40,000 years ago, and most still did as recently as 11,000 years ago.

The strong individualism of U.S. society allows successful inventors to keep earnings for themselves, whereas strong family ties in New Guinea ensure that someone who begins to earn money will be joined by a dozen relatives expecting to move in and be fed and supported.