GEOG 1200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Hubris, Koyaanisqatsi, Ethnic Religion
Document Summary
Section iv: the geography of language and religion. The defining cornerstone of human culture and identity. Humans are genetically hard-wired for complex linguistic ability and self-consciousness. A map of religious and linguistic regions is in many ways of culture regions: classification and distribution of language. The classification of language: proto-language: an ancestral language from which several language families or languages are descended (e. g. proto indo-european spoken in eastern anatolia and the caucasus about 5,000 years ago) Language family: a group of languages descended from a single earlier language whose similarity cannot be the result of circumstance; when languages are shown to have a common ancestor, they are said to be cognate languages. Languages change naturally in place over time, even in the absence of outside forces such as immigration or hostile invasion (english from old english to middle english to modern english in. Indo- european family (386 languages; 2. 5 billion speakers)