Mid-Term Paper

Mid-term Paper
Question: How does geography affect culture development? There are many cultures in the history of human kind, each very diverse and unique in its own way. There are many factors which lead to their diversity and uniqueness, such as the different interaction factors with other cultures. However, one of the most important factors of all is the geographical conditions in which the culture had to develop to. Geography can affect a culture greatly in many different ways. Geography provided the environment, resources, and the location crucial to the development of a culture. The most important factor of all is the resources which helps the culture to develop drastically. Resources help the development of culture in many ways. Resources are necessary for people to exploit and to adapt to certain techniques. The Africans, for example, specialized in forging because their land provided plenty of metal. For the Mesoamericans, jade was precious yet plentiful in the region. They created many statues and figures that are considered sacred, such as the jade figure. On the other hand, by having abundant amount of resources, the civilization can develop and flourish. The Mesoamericans lived on a rich land, so they settled there. They could develop their own unique culture without any other external influences or moving to other places. However, in Africa, the resources were scarce. The Bantu-speaking people, due to overpopulation and shortage of resources, were forced to migrate around. They came to most of the places in Africa and interacted with many different local people. They would exchange ideas, such as iron making, mingle with the people and merging their culture with others. As a result, the main language in Africa is Swahili, which initially was the Bantu language, and shows that the culture in Africa was heavily influenced by Bantu-speaking people. Because of the resources, the Bantu-speaking people were forced to move, and by blending their