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:
“To be faced with what so-and-so’s mother lets him do, or what the teacher said in class today or what all the kids are wearing is to be required to reexamine some part of our belief structure. Each time we rethink our values we reaffirm them or begin to change them. Seen in this way, parenthood affords us an exceptional opportunity for growth.”
—Ruth Davidson Bell (20th century)
“What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)