The Characteristics, Distribution, and Complexity of Earth's Cultural Mosaics Culture is a complex, multifaceted concept. It is a term used to cover the social structure, languages, belief systems, institutions, technology, art, foods, and traditions of particular groups of humans. The term is used to define each group's way of life and its own view of itself and of other groups, as well as to define the material goods it creates and uses, the skills it has developed, and the behaviors it transmits to each successive generation. The human world is composed of culture groups, each of which has its distinctive way of life as reflected in the group's land-use practices, economic activities, organization and layout of settlements, attitudes toward the role of women in society, education system, and observance of traditional customs and holidays. These ways of life result in landscapes and regions with a distinctive appearance.
Landscapes often overlap, thus forming elaborate mosaics of peoples and places.
These cultural mosaics can be approached from a variety of spatial scales. As Earth evolves into an increasingly interdependent world in which different culture groups come into contact more than ever before, it becomes more important that people have an understanding of the nature, complexity, and spatial distribution of cultural mosaics. The geographically informed person, therefore, is an individual who has a thorough grasp of the nature and distribution of culture groups. Language both represents and reflects many aspects of a culture. It stands as an important symbol of culture.