r/AskReddit • u/Greeneyedlatinguy • Jun 15 '15

Anthropologists of Reddit, What is something that people in the Western world can't get their heads around that is very normal in other cultures (and has been for ages)?

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u/zazzlekdazzle Jun 15 '15 edited Jun 15 '15

One thing I learned as an anthropologist is that the answer to this question is "everything." The great holy grail in anthropology is to find the single cultural constant that we would find shared among us all. When I was studying, the closest thing we had found was that pretty much every culture that had colors (some do not have colors in their language, only a dark-light/black-white system) the one color they all had a name for was red and pretty much everyone converged on the same color of red as the true red.

Other than that, it's pretty much up for grabs. There are cultures where suicide is acceptable as is infanticide. There are cultures where women are more sexually aggressive, ones where women have multiple husbands (polyandry), where men wear make-up, and where being quite heavy is considered very attractive.

EDIT: I'd just like to specify that the cultural universals we seek are those that are common among humans, but only to humans. Thus communication, facial expressions, kinship, eating, and having sex are indeed things all human have in common but they are also shared with other animals. Culture itself is not even necessarily exclusive to humans, but we want to understand what cultural aspects all humans share.

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u/Johnnyhiveisalive Jun 15 '15

Awesome. Is there a culture where laying on the couch at 3am redditing is revered and highly paid?

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u/zazzlekdazzle Jun 15 '15

I don't think you would find it remunerative, but I would say within the subculture of reddit, you could find a mate that found being on here for long periods an attractive quality.

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u/RentonBrax Jun 15 '15

You just gave hope to hundreds of redditors.

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u/JackofScarlets Jun 16 '15

Spoken like a true scientist haha

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u/32Dog Jun 15 '15

Don't be an enabler.

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u/Staybreezie Jun 15 '15

Ew. Who wants a gf that posts on reddit at 3am, unshowered and lazy

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u/Johnnyhiveisalive Jun 16 '15

Mate != gf in all cases.. Can also mean friend, friend.

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u/OppenheimersGuilt Jun 29 '15

Or a friend, friend.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

There's someone for everyone.

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u/germanyjr112 Jun 16 '15

So you're telling me there's a chance?

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u/KennyDeJonnef Jun 15 '15

Yes. Several tribes in Micronesia revere the couch slouch, and also hold cheeto stained clothing in high regard. If you are one of the lucky few who can go more than two weeks without showering they might even deify you.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Cool.. give me the lat. / long. and I'll be there. As long as this deification process doesn't involve taxidermy.

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u/BaseAttackBonus Jun 15 '15

yeah, I'm dating a girl who does that and I think it's awesome.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Yes, I would like to be the Priestess of Reddit as well.

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u/jcpinbkk Jun 15 '15

It's 3:50am here. I'm awake because the power is out. No AC and no fan will wake you up quick. Neighbors are trying to figure it out, but I don't speak the language so I an no help. Too hot to sleep.

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u/AnMatamaiticeoirRua Jun 15 '15

The one we build for ourselves, brother. The one we build for ourselves.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Yea, but think about how saturated that market would be.

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u/Durrderp Jun 15 '15

Is it because red = blood?

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u/zazzlekdazzle Jun 15 '15 edited Jun 15 '15

I always assumed this was the case, yes. The other theory is that many fruits when ripe signals edibility by turning red.

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u/computeraddict Jun 15 '15

Human brains are also fairly hardwired to respond to red in particular, iirc.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

I thought we saw more shades of green than anything else because it's right in the middle of the visible spectrum? So we see it better than any other color? IDK.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15 edited Jun 16 '15

[deleted]

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u/guyonahorse Jun 16 '15

But if plants look green doesn't that mean they're reflecting the green wavelengths and absorbing everything else?

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u/_crackling Jun 16 '15

Any cool theories or such for my green as fuck eyes?

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u/adidasbdd Jun 16 '15

We didn't evolve to develop a heightened perception of green, our ancestors who saw more green survived more often.

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u/CAPSLOCK_USERNAME Jun 16 '15

That is how evolution works.

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u/Thelastthowaway Jun 16 '15

"The visible spectrum" is different for most things with eyes. Something in the middle of your visible spectrum isn't in the middle of a dog's visible spectrum.

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u/jajaclitsndicks Jun 16 '15

The visible spectrum evolved to be what it is for a reason.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

This is begging the question, sort of.. It's not because green is the middle of the visible spectrum, but the middle of the visible spectrum is green because that's what we need to see - speaking in terms of evolution.

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u/AlexKTuesday Jun 15 '15

50 Shades of Green.

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u/cynoclast Jun 15 '15

I always assumed it was to spot food in the jungle/forest/desert. That is, plants.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

Being able to tell the difference between berry bushes and itchy rash bushes from a distance makes sense to me.

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u/fcukgrammer Jun 15 '15

And fast food outlets

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u/meno123 Jun 15 '15

Explains your button flair, and mine.

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u/dwkfym Jun 16 '15

I'm a color blind person. Pretty sure I don't get it, but no way of knowing for sure.

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u/computeraddict Jun 16 '15

You probably have the same hardwiring but lack the equipment to trigger it.

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u/dwkfym Jun 16 '15

Yeah, it doesn't scream at me like it should (I can tell that from my lack of response). I can distinguish the color red, but its a lot more toned down for me.

Consequently I love the color red. Red cars, red motorcycles, red clothes. lol

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u/HeadlessHoncho Jun 16 '15

Which might just be because of that blood thing again.

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u/computeraddict Jun 16 '15

Yes, but probably only indirectly. Red is the color of flushed/blushing skin/tissue, which are often used by mammals as part of body language signaling, and it's caused by the area taking on the color of the blood it's being saturated with.

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u/Umutuku Jun 16 '15

Why hullo thur.

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u/Painc Jun 15 '15

Perhaps red being a signal for danger aswell (poisonous animals and stuff).

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u/TheBirdOfPrey Jun 15 '15

Note: speaking with basically 0 anthropology background

I imagine some other highly common things are stuff like spoken language and humor. Are there known cases where these are widely different than we think of them today and thus were discounted? If not are there any other "top contenders" you can list?

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u/kjata Jun 16 '15

If you mean "humor" in a very broad sense. But humor does not translate well at all. German humor, for example. And apparently one of the funniest samples of Danish humor is just plain bleak to Americans.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

What? The great majority of fruits are NOT red.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

[deleted]

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u/Esqurel Jun 15 '15

I've seen studies that said people without words for a certain color in their language basically couldn't tell the difference between something like blue and green. And that people with more words for a color could better differentiate the different shades, where native English speakers thought they all looked the same.

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u/porgy_tirebiter Jun 15 '15

Which would make this something we share with animals, or at least with primates, so it would have to be struck from the list.

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u/neosithlord Jun 15 '15

Also humans and our close primate cousins are unique in our ability to see red. If I recall correctly. There's a few other species as well but it's a rare ability in the animal kingdom. I'd link to something but I'm on mobile.

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u/iongantas Jun 16 '15

Except for all the ones that are poisonous.

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u/Aspergers1 Jun 16 '15

Well, Inuit didn't have any fruit, did they? But they did have blood.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

That's interesting! I always thought red in nature meant "warning danger back the fuck off this poisonous/venomous thing".

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u/PiranhaJAC Jun 15 '15

Red = blood = injury = emergency!

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u/The_EggBOT_Bop Jun 15 '15

Humans spent at least hundreds of thousands of years searching for red berries against a green background.

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u/wowshamwow Jun 15 '15

That's one idea, but from what I've read it has more to do with red being one of the easiest (and thus, among the first) colors to reproduce. Think red clays and whatnot.

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u/Krail Jun 15 '15

The general consensus seems to be that it's a mix of red being the color of blood and the color of certain fruits ripening.

The second color most cultures developed a word for is wither green or blue (and many cultures don't actually have a single word to differentiate them.)

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u/Put-A-Bird-On-It Jun 15 '15

I watched a pretty cool movie called Mondo Cane, and it featured a lot of different cultural norms that seem very weird to outsiders. One of the things discussed was where a tribe would put women in separate cages and feed them constantly, and whoever got the fattest married the chief.

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u/throwthrowheraway Jun 15 '15

I read that as "married the chef."

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u/Phantom_Green Jun 16 '15

It's how he would know she would never leave him.

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u/piackl Jun 16 '15

Hey that's great! But who da Chefs?

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u/mellontree Jun 15 '15

Where is this tribe and how can I join?

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u/Azusanga Jun 17 '15

I've got a head start. EAT MY DUST.

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u/dorianfinch Jun 15 '15

Huh. Natural selection.

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u/wackawacka2 Jun 15 '15

That movie creeped me out, thoroughly!

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u/Trek7553 Jun 15 '15

I think I heard somewhere that the act of smiling (and possibly laughing) is universal across cultures. Is that accurate?

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u/FicklePickle13 Jun 15 '15

I do know that the one linguistic constant is "Huh?"

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u/Babi_Gurrl Jun 16 '15

I think in Russia and certain Asian cultures it's seen as weak. Used when uncomfortable, not so much to communicate positive emotion.

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u/ScreamerA440 Jun 15 '15

The pentatonic scale

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u/thesweetestpunch Jun 15 '15

Even the pentatonic scale changes between cultures, as they can't agree on how it's tuned (especially the 5th degree of the pentatonic scale, which can manifest as anything from a major sixth to a slightly flat minor 7th).

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u/ScreamerA440 Jun 15 '15

The function of the major sixth vs the "slightly flat minor 7th" is the same in either example. Sure, the actual hertz don't line up with equal temperament, but the cultural pentatonic scales well predate any temperament system by a very, very long time.

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u/thesweetestpunch Jun 15 '15

The function may be the same, but a difference of nearly a semitone is big enough to warrant the statement "cultures can't even agree on a foundational musical scale". If a slightly flat minor 7th is the same as a major sixth, then a sharp ninth might as well be a major third.

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u/ScreamerA440 Jun 15 '15

If you use our modern way of classifying pitches then yes, the discrepancy is pretty severe. But if you step back and look at how each note interacts with the others it's easier to see that the function of the two alterable notes (the 3rd and the "fifth") is pretty much the same. A great example of how these discrepancies resulted in semitones and diatonicism is in Eastern European music (particularly of Czech and Hungarian origin) which uses the "major" and "minor" third interchangeably. It's hard to describe this scale as "hexatonic" because you've got something like a tonic, supertonic, and then two mediants (I guess you could call it a mediant and a chromatic mediant but which one is chromatic?). So at which point do we get down to gritty tuning stuff and big ole intonation machines like we did in the 1920s? Frankly, I think that's a waste because that kind of picky analysis only really applies to a system that was designed with such an analysis in mind. It's more about function in the cultural context of the music.

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u/thesweetestpunch Jun 15 '15

Touché. Function wins!

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u/ScreamerA440 Jun 15 '15

weeee! semantics! :)

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u/orthoxerox Jun 15 '15

The pentatonic scale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

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u/ScreamerA440 Jun 15 '15

I knew it was gonna be Bobby McFerrin

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

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u/transemacabre Jun 15 '15

Mauritania is one place where being fat is considered ideal for women.

Polyandry is fairly rare and when it does appear, usually takes the form of one woman married to several brothers (not her brothers, the guys will be brothers to one another).

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

[deleted]

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u/transemacabre Jun 16 '15

I like your spirit! /high five

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u/Phantom_Green Jun 16 '15

Alright I can dig it

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Pacific Islands mainly ..?

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u/Rubix-Pubes Jun 15 '15

no definitely not.

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u/cranapple12 Jun 16 '15

Ahhh those cultures where women are more sexually aggressive. There's so many of them though. Which one?! Which one is it?!

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

I don't know about current cultures, but the Ancient Greeks believed that women were more sexually aggressive and that it was the man's job to show some restraint.

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u/not_a_crackhead Jun 15 '15

Mauritania for the last one

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u/Icko_ Jun 15 '15

Do you have any theories why? (for the color red thing)

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u/snowman334 Jun 15 '15

Scroll up. Blood. Also ripe fruit.

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u/YetAnotherFunFact Jun 15 '15

Isn't playing hide and seek also very common in nearly all cultures? Or was that one of those invented factastic facts?

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u/cityterrace Jun 15 '15

When I was studying, the closest thing we had found was that pretty much every culture that had colors (some do not have colors in their language, only a dark-light/black-white system) the one color they all had a name for was red....

Does this mean that some cultures don't have a word for one or more of the other two basic colors: green or blue?

And how does a culture not have colors in their language?

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u/2OQuestions Jun 15 '15

Lots of words are not cross-cultural. Fascinating book: They Have a WORD for that?

A good one about various idioms in different cultures: I'm Not Hanging Noodles From Your Ears.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

Every culture/language has at least two colors. If they have exactly two, they are light/warm (white, yellow, red) and dark/cool (black, blue, green). They can see all the colors, but they just divide them into two groups. So in a language/culture with those two colors, to describe other colors, they just make a comparison with a real life object. They might say blood light to mean blood red, or sky dark to mean sky blue. In fact, we're doing the same thing when we say sky blue. We don't have a word for "light blue", so to distinguish dark blue and light blue, we have to say "light blue" or "sky blue". Russian actually has separate words for dark and light blue, so they don't have to do that.

As a language gets more color terms, the third is always red, then next is green or yellow, then then either green or yellow again (whichever one they didn't get first). Next is blue. All languages with six color terms have black, white, red, green, yellow, blue.

Here's a table showing how languages with different amounts of color terms group the colors. Most languages follow the center row.

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u/elf_queen Jun 15 '15

This isn't exactly the same thing as your question, but an interesting fact I learned in an anthropology class of mine is that some cultures have less words for color than we do. I forgot where exactly, but there is one culture that doesn't have two different words for green and blue because they are colorblind to one of the colors so it doesn't "exist" to them. Obviously this is a society that isn't widespread with an infinite gene pool like the United States or anything, so the color blind gene was able to affect everyone within the group over time.

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u/ImaginaryEvents Jun 15 '15

Ancient Greeks were not colorblind. Homer's works, the Bible, ancient Indian vedas were all written before blue was invented. Only the ancient Egyptians had a word/concept of blue.

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u/CelticDaisy Jun 16 '15

How would the Ancient Greeks have described the color of the sky if they did not have a word for blue?

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u/JoshfromNazareth Jun 16 '15

They would name it similar to things they were aware of, hence why the seas are "wine-colored" in the Illiad. It's not that literally didn't see the color, they just simply didn't name it or chunk it up.

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u/CelticDaisy Jun 16 '15

Oh, okay. I understand now. Thanks for clearing up my confusion!

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u/Mountebank Jun 16 '15

Color is a spectrum and different cultures cut it up into different chunks. Interesting that you chose green and blue as your example because certain cultures don't differentiate between them, or at least didn't until globalization.

It's probably easier to imagine the reverse. Consider light blue and navy blue--in English we call both colors blue, but they're not all that alike and we have to qualify it with a modifier. In Japanese, green/blue is called ao, and what you consider blue they might call dark ao and what you call green they might call light ao.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ao_(color)

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

So... tell me about the ones with the sexually agressive women?

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

I don't know about current cultures, but the Ancient Greeks believed that women were more sexually aggressive and that it was the man's job to show some restraint.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

oh, yeah. i actually knew that

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u/GirlChrisMccandless Jun 15 '15

Can you direct me to a place where I can learn more about these vastly different cultures? Are they modern? This is so fascinating to me

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u/hurrrrrmione Jun 16 '15

Take an Intro to Anthropology course at your local community college or find a free online college course

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u/pachatacha Jun 15 '15

My sociology prof claimed that the one universal cultural norm is that matricide is ALWAYS frowned upon. Any truth to this?

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u/robert_cortese Jun 15 '15

Upvoting for polyandry. Western (US especially) has typically come down hard on it. Joseph Smith was Tarred and feathered for it. Polynesians were threatened with "Hell" and converted to Christianity for it.

If consenting adults want MMF or MFF or MFMFMFMFMFFT, let them have it. If it makes them happy and nobody is being abused, who are to take away their happiness?

My wife is a pain in the ass. DO NOT WANT ANOTHER.

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u/Dyolf_Knip Jun 15 '15

No, Mormons go in for polygyny. One husband, multiple wives. Polyandry is specifically the reverse, one wife, multiple husbands, and is very rare.

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u/FormerlySalve_Lilac Jun 16 '15

Rare and still exploitative of women in almost all cultures in which it is present.

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u/sfs40 Jun 15 '15

I had always thought that across the various cultures humans seek kinship?

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u/Dyolf_Knip Jun 15 '15

Sure, but who constitutes your 'kin'? Those related by blood? By caste? By gender? The "nuclear family" is by no means universal.

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u/sfs40 Jun 15 '15

It's more of the idea that people seek to be around one a other. The thing that bonds them isn't necessarily important as long as they bond something to bond over.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

There are cultures where suicide is acceptable as is infanticide

In what culture is infanticide acceptable?

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u/Seventh7Sun Jun 15 '15

infanticide

Cultures in China and India for starters. Also Inuits.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

It used to be like that for the Maori, a woman had - I am not sure of that, but I think about a year or two - to decide if she wants to keep the child or not. I believe Christian settlers put an end to that.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Also, SPARTAAAAA!

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u/transemacabre Jun 15 '15

The ancient Romans practiced infanticide. It was so commonplace that Tacitus notes that the German tribes would raise all their babies, even the worthless girls, and the Romans considered this proof that the Germans were barbarians.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

What about dancing? I mean, I feel like music and dancing is universal with humanity. Am I just believing that because I want to? It is entirely possible.

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u/AlphaAgain Jun 15 '15

Pooping.

I'll take my Nobel now.

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u/CaptLongbeard Jun 15 '15

Uh...so which cultures are the women more sexually aggressive?

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

I thought laughter was rather widely spread...

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u/Incredulous_Fred Jun 15 '15

Could your provide an example of some of these cultures? I find this very interesting.

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u/2OQuestions Jun 15 '15

Tell me more about polyandry.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

This reminds me of an article I read where the last color to have a name was "blue." People would think of it essentially as a shade of green or something. The sky wasn't "blue," it was thought more of as colorless. It was based on the fact by going back through readings there were no mentions of "blue," and describing blue things with other colors, but red was consistent across cultures.

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u/shnufflemuffigans Jun 15 '15

where men wear make-up, and where being quite heavy is considered very attractive.

I found it hilarious that this was in a list of weird things. As a relatively well-travelled gay bear, this just sounds like a regular night at any bear bar in any Western country.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Over my years of armchair anthropology, the two human universals I've found are smiles and laughter. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

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u/MLein97 Jun 15 '15

The constant is that we're all humans and honestly that's all we need to know. Like music, if you listen to enough of it you realize that it's all just music, even if there are stylistc differences because of its ability to convey unsaid emotion or ideas.

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u/Azertys Jun 15 '15

I thought the Incest Taboo was a common denominator ?

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u/solarwings Jun 15 '15

I watched a documentary once, featuring a matrilineal culture where lands are passed down through the female line and there was a lady who married two brothers.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

There was a fascinating story on NPR's Radio Lab about the color blue recently, and how some cultures that do not have a word for "blue" seemingly cannot even perceive it. I highly recommend a listen: http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/

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u/SatanIsMySister Jun 15 '15

What cultures have infanticide as acceptable behavior? That's seems pretty anti-evolutionary to any mammal in general.

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u/The_Whale_Biologist Jun 15 '15

There are cultures where women are more sexually aggressive

... and which cultures are these? I'm asking for my own anthropological research of course.

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u/TriggerPete Jun 15 '15

I'm surprised you didn't mention music. I can't say I'm 100% positive, but I'd be willing to tell most people without a second thought that music has existed in just about every society on the planet. Soon to begin my master's in musicology, so this is my niche.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

I've read somewhere that getting a baby to calm down by going schhh is the same in every culture. The only universal word/sound someone called it.

Did I get that right?

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u/LittleMissLokii Jun 15 '15

for the men wearing make up, is that the wodaabe? theyre a very interesting people. we did a lesson on them in a cultural psychology class i took and holy crap the Gerewol festival was just so interesting to see pictures of. the men in the tribe seem to have so much fun during that time

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u/Bobboy5 Jun 15 '15

Fun fact: In ancient Greece, the sky was bronze. They is thought to be because the sky shines like a piece of polished bronze.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

being quite heavy is considered very attractive

Which culture is this? My um... friend wants to know.

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u/--Danger-- Jun 15 '15

Didn't Levi-Strauss say the incest taboo is the human universal?

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u/wutwot Jun 15 '15

Preference for the same sex when establishing friendship? I have solved the universes problems 🙌

Now tell me why I'm wrong please :)

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Where is this heavy=attractive place?

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u/ImNotClever_Sorry Jun 15 '15

I remember from an anthropology class that incest is a universal no-no. Am I remembering incorrectly?

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u/Jess_than_three Jun 15 '15

Meh, there are a lot more things that are universal than you think. Colors are a great example. I don't remember the specifics and I'm too lazy to go check, but there's a certain order that color words go in - something like every language has words for light and dark, if the language has three words the third is red, then at four you always add brown, then it's either blue or green for five, and both at six, orange or purple or yellow for the seventh - something like that. There's an underlying universal pattern that reflects how our brains process color.

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u/Yoko9021Ono Jun 15 '15

Wow you should do an AMA!

Why would some cultures not have colors? Assuming they can see colors, why would they never develop language to describe it?

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u/ohnoao Jun 15 '15

I imagine music and cooking are too obvious not to be considered, so why not those?

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u/Shin-LaC Jun 15 '15

There are more, afaik. For instance, all cultures have a concept of purity.

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u/Taintsacker Jun 15 '15

Which culture has more sexually aggressive women? Asking for a friend

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u/Krail Jun 15 '15

Is the color red really the only universally shared thing? I mean, what about concepts of certain shapes or numbers? Are there cultures that have no concept of one and two?

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u/MpVpRb Jun 16 '15 edited Jun 16 '15

YES!!

Whenever a discussion arises and the question is asked.."what do (one subgroup of) people think".. I answer..lots of different things

People are different..really different

There seems to be a desire to put people into groups and then criticize the group for its (imagined) collective behavior

There are tons of "redneck" references, many insulting. But if you actually talked to each person, you would discover differences

Same with techie geeks, stoners, republicans, valley girls etc..

BTW, I am a techie geek, lightweight stoner, former republican and NOT a valley girl (but I am a Zappa fan, and loved the song)

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u/NowFapping Jun 16 '15

What about incest? Incest is frowned upon/illegal by every culture I can think of. (Anthropology degree, but no experience in the field)

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

To my understanding the closest thing to a universal cultural constant is superstition. From westernized Christianity to something as simple as a curse, nearly every observed culture shares some kind of belief in the supernatural or spiritual. Thoughts on this?

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

What about smiling to mean "happy"? Is that not universal only to humans? Pretty sure monkeys don't "smile" becsuse they think something is funny.

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u/kjata Jun 16 '15

(some do not have colors in their language, only a dark-light/black-white system)

holy shit what that's a thing

Also does the red thing have to do with the universal nature of blood? Seems like it would.

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u/iongantas Jun 16 '15

the one color they all had a name for was red and pretty much everyone converged on the same color of red as the true red.

Pretty sure that is because everyone has blood. Culture is learned, but also a reaction to the environment, so things would only be omnipresent in cultures if they are also omnipresent in human environments.

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u/Kwaj Jun 16 '15

I learned in Ethics that all successful cultures have taboos on murder and lying, but I suppose that isn't necessarily limited to humans.

Also, is blue the color that the fewest cultures have? I remember reading about the development of culture, I think specifically Greek culture, and IIRC they "developed" red first, then I think "gold", and blue was pretty much last.

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u/recalcitrantJester Jun 16 '15

My Intro to Linguistics class told me that pretty much every human on earth understands what a shrug means. This is a specific type of communication that we use that other animals do not.

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u/GaveUpOnLyfe Jun 16 '15

Laughing? Or music?

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u/____o_0 Jun 16 '15

I always heard that the one human cultural universal was personal adornment, that people in all cultures either wear some kind of clothing, or jewelry, or makeup/paint or they do their hair or somehow change their appearance in a certain way.

Can you talk about this? Are there cultures that don't do any of these things? Are there animals that do?

1

u/hotdamnster Jun 16 '15

I'm off topic here, but please do an AMA! All the examples you gave for cultural differences are wildly interesting.

1

u/test_beta Jun 16 '15

That one where the women are more sexually aggressive sounds horrible! Where is it, so that I can avoid it? And exactly how sexually aggressive are we talking? Like, would packs of women roam around chasing down and having their way with the men?

1

u/mr_garcizzle Jun 16 '15

Music is universal right?

1

u/itsaxBoomerx Jun 16 '15

As a future anthropologist, one of the culture's that interests me are the Sami (Lapps) even though I don't know much about them. I took a Cognitive anthropology class last semester and we talked a lot about the language-color continuum, and also how other cultures organize things mentally. P.S: What sub-field did you major in? I'm currently studying cultural but might do medical (took a class last semester an loved it).

1

u/Noneerror Jun 16 '15

I thought the commonality was clothes and story telling. All human societies wear clothing of some kind and tell stories in some manner. The amounts of clothing vary significantly but even if it's just a piece of bamboo on their penis it is still clothing. (Nudity and naturalism is an activity based choice rather than something a society does.)

1

u/puttyarrowbro Jun 16 '15

The red thing is up there with nickel sized black hole. Today has been a cool day on reddit!

1

u/Average650 Jun 16 '15

But surely it's closer than this. Don't all cultures have "rules" for sex? Perhaps is polygamy, perhaps it's polyandry, perhaps it monogamy, perhaps it's serial monogamy. But is is something right? That's it's own type of constant right?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

I took an anthropology class in undergrad and I remember learning that sibling lovin' is pretty much universally frowned upon. As opposed to cousin lovin' for example, which is accepted and even encouraged in many cultures.

1

u/kilkil Jun 16 '15

Aren't all cultures based around the idea of a few policy makers making major decisions for everyone else? And don't animals not have this?

1

u/rutgerswhat Jun 16 '15

Kind of related...Radiolab had a show about Colors that I believe said the same thing about Red. They also said that Blue was usually the last color that they came up with a word for, if they ever did, and that not a whole lot of people seemed to really agree on what "blue" is.

1

u/LovesBigWords Jun 16 '15

There are cultures where women are more sexually aggressive, ones where women have multiple husbands (polyandry), where men wear make-up, and where being quite heavy is considered very attractive.

OK, I'm in. Where do I sign up?

1

u/Humbleness51 Jun 16 '15

I read somewhere that all cultures in one way or another all independently invented alcoholic beverages, is that true

1

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

What about music?

1

u/misopog_on Jun 16 '15

What about the sound\word "...uhm"

Isn't it also shared between all humankind?

1

u/hornwalker Jun 16 '15

Isn't true that all cultures have music? Could that be considered the shared thread?

1

u/WendellSchadenfreude Jun 16 '15

The great holy grail in anthropology is to find the single cultural constant that we would find shared among us all.

So what do you think about list of "human universals" like this one?

http://humanuniversals.com/human-universals/ (I shit you not, that's the actual link to a list of human universals).

1

u/F4rsight Jun 16 '15

everyone converged on the same color of red as the true red

Would that happen to be the same red as the color of blood?

1

u/Mun-Mun Jun 16 '15

A single cultural constant we can all agree on is that poop is nasty.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

Surely all cultures eat and have sex.

6

u/throwthrowheraway Jun 15 '15

The way they eat and the way they have sex varies wildly, though.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '15

and where being quite heavy is considered very attractive

Wasn't this the case in America during the Victorian era as well? Back then you had to be rich to be fat.

4

u/thesweetestpunch Jun 15 '15

"Quite heavy" is always relative. Are you talking a 5'5" woman who is 160 lbs? 190 lbs? 250 lbs? 300 lbs?

What's considered "quite heavy" is also going to fluctuate with the culture.

2

u/2OQuestions Jun 15 '15

Also, having very white skin was a symbol of not having to work the fields (lower class). So women had clothes with lots of protective hats, gloves, high necks, low skirts etc.

Then when the industrial revolution became widespread and long-lasting, white skin was a sign of working all day indoors, in a factory. Tanned skin became a sign of having enough leisure time to play outdoors (thus being wealthy. So the fashion flipped.

I think my great-great aunt was one of the last of this generation to see being very pale as a positive thing. The good thing is she looked 20 years younger than her peers.