How does geography affect culture?

Geography is very important to understanding culture. Places along the coast may have an oceangoing culture. Fish might be a major part of their diet. Many ethnic Portuguese dishes use fish. Fish also appears prominently in Thai and British cuisine.

Climate, as it relates to geography, is also important for understanding a culture. Some places in Central and South America have the siesta, a midday break, because it is too hot to do much in the middle of the day. Most countries who are traditionally good at hockey are places with cold winters. This is also true for other cold-weather sports, such as Alpine skiing. People from cold-weather areas also wear heavier clothes than people from warm-weather areas who typically only wear light textiles.

Geography can also affect the economy of a region. Large-scale agriculture is common in the United States and Ukraine due to the fertility of the soil there. Areas next to the coast are known for trade. Tokyo and London have taken advantage of their maritime locations in order to build massive trading empires. Countries rich in oil such as Saudi Arabia have cashed in on their resources, creating an economic system in which a few people have gotten quite wealthy.

Geography dictates a great deal of one's culture. The availability of certain foods can dictate one's national cuisine. Geography can dictate how one is able to make money and one's dress. Geography can also dictate the economy of a country. All of these things contribute to understanding a culture. Even when people from one culture move to another area, they often take elements of their culture with them; for example, immigrants to the United States may still eat traditional dishes from their home countries.

Another example of how inextricably joined are the geography of a country and its culture can be witnessed in the country of the Netherlands. The main industry is fishing for what would seem to be obvious reasons. But, the primary reason that the fishing industry began is the herring that abounds around the waters of this country and are sold throughout the world.

The Hollandse Nieuwe (Dutch New) is raw herring from the early catches of the Spring and the start of summer. The Hollandse Nieuwe is available only in the spring when the first catch is brought on. This first catch is celebrated in festivals; the remainder of the herring are frozen and enzyme-preserved for the rest of the year. The young herring, called whitebait, are eaten whole and chased with a special wine made in this country. Of course, the fishing industry is huge in this country. The Dutch also became great adventurers on the sea, traveling far and wide and thereby becoming merchants.

With all their canals, the Dutch also love ice skating, especially speed skating. With a route of frozen rivers, canals, and lakes the Elfstedentocht is announced 48 hours before it begins to assure that conditions are propitious. This race is eleven miles and leads past all eleven historical cities of the province of Friesland. This race is such a rare event that it generates excitement throughout the country.

In this question, what you are really asking is how physical geography affects culture, which is one part of human geography.  This is a question about how the physical nature of a given area affects the cultures of the people who live in this area.  Physical geography can affect culture in many ways, from the number of languages spoken in a given area to the clothes people wear to their forms of political organization and even to their religion.

Physical geography can affect the number of languages spoken in a given area.  A prime example of this is the island of New Guinea.  It is said that this island is home to people who speak over 800 different languages.  The main reason for this is that New Guinea is very mountainous and it is hard for people from one area of the island to come into contact with people from other areas.  This means that each group keeps mostly to itself and can develop and keep its own language.

Perhaps the most obvious way that geography affects culture is in its impact on the clothes people wear and the ways in which they make their living.  People living in the Arctic will have cultures that center around hunting seals and whales.  They will, of course, have to wear a great deal of clothing.   This will be different from people who live in tropical rainforests, who will wear little clothing and whose economies will revolve around various kinds of plant life.

Physical geography can even affect forms of government and religion.  It is said that the ancient Greeks developed city-states because of their mountainous geography.  Because Greece was so mountainous, it was hard for large kingdoms to arise.  Would-be kings could not easily move across the mountains to dominate people far from their home cities.  Therefore, the Greeks developed a political culture based on the city-state.  Moving further back into history, it is said that geography caused differences in Mesopotamian and Egyptian religion.  The Mesopotamian religion believed that its gods were much less kind than the Egyptian gods.  Scholars believe that this was due to the fact that the rivers of Mesopotamia flooded in unpredictable ways while the Nile’s flood was rather consistent and predictable.

These are but a few of the many ways in which geography can affect human culture.

How does physical geography influence world cultures?

The geography of a region and the human uses of that are interdependent in a number of obvious ways.  For instance, people living along a seacoast tend to fish, so they develop cultures involving the sea, boats, fishing techniques, a diet rich in seafoods, etc.  Of course this will also be combined with the resources of the land they live on.  In colder areas, such as Northern Europe, the raising of sheep for wool is common, and knitting became important.  In Ireland and in Norway, for example, people developed distinctive knitting patterns for the sweaters so that unrecognizable bodies of drowned sailors or fishermen could be recognized by the clothes.  In the South Pacific island cultures, less clothing was needed to start with, and clothes that were light kept the fishermen from overheating in the sun.  The plants that grew there were used as fibers for clothing, rather than the hair or skins of animals.

People who lived in mountainous geography developed entirely different cultures from sea-going peoples, often isolationist in character.  Clothes, customs, languages and tools all reflect the needs of a population to a very large degree dictated by the geography and climate of the region where they live.  Architecture is effected, also.  The open Roman villas, developed in a warm and sunny climate, would have been unbearable in the forests of northern Europe, where wooden log houses developed, with greater insulating properties.  The movable yurts of the steppes cultures across northern and central Asia were a function of the geography, which demanded a nomadic lifestyle. The links below will take you to sites with more information.

One of the interesting things I've noticed is the difference between the Great Pyramid and other Egyptian monuments with astronomical orientations and Stonehenge.  In Egypt, their astronomical capabilities were very limited.  Something constant, such as the location of the sun on midsummer's day, was something they could tell and build a sighting device for.  But that was about all; their astronomy was actually quite limited.  Stonehenge, on the other hand, although built by an obviously more "primitive" culture was an extremely versatile astronomical site, capable of telling in great detail exactly where the sun, moon and stars would be in the sky at different times of the year.  I believe this was because of geographical differences, which effected the two cultures.  In Egypt, life depended on the Nile River, which regularly flooded and receeded, providing the basis of Egyptian agriculture.  In Britain the changes of the seasons were more erratic, and the growing season shorter.  The culture there had a greater need to know precisely what time of year to plant what types of crops, and thus the great degree of accuracy of their astronomical "clock".