A mother culture is a term for an early people' culture, with great and widespread influence on later cultures and people. Though the original culture may fade, the mother culture's influence grows for ages in the future. Later civilizations either learn and build upon their old ways, or can learn them through peaceful or military assimilation. This term can be found in the novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
A mother culture is what gives birth to a culture, and although it does not necessarily start up its customs, it is the root that gives rise to a grand fruit tree otherwise known as society that can be traced back to its mother. This tree might undergo a catastrophe that will cause all its societies that sprung up to shrivel away but the mother culture is what we attribute to their origins.
Mother cultures in history include that of Kemet in the Mediterranean, and the Olmec in Mesoamerica.
Read more about Mother Culture: In Ishmael
Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or culture:
“It was palpable, all that wanting: Mother wanting something more, Dad wanting something more, everyone wanting something more. This wasn’t going to do for us fifties girls; we were going to have to change the equation even if it meant . . . abstaining from motherhood, because clearly that was where Mother got caught.”
—Anne Taylor Fleming (20th century)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)