Alfred KroeberThinkers

Civilization is, as it were, only in the mind. Gunpowder, textile arts, machinery, laws, telephones are not themselves transmitted from man to man or from generation to generation. Rather, it is the perception, the knowledge and understanding of them, their ideas in the platonic sense, that are passed along. Everything social can have existence only through mentality.

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Culture history is the idea that how we find peoples is a result of how they unfolded over time.

Ecumene is an early greek concept meaning something similar to globalization and referring in particular to how new cultural materials and new ways of thinking were rapidly propagated like a wave or pulsation and how primitive' cultures coalesced through selective reduction'.

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Magic is characteristic of 'retarded' cultures and occurs in 'advanced' cultures only among the socially disadvantaged, psychotic or mentally subnormal.

The Sky is that beautiful old parchment in which the sun and the moon keep their diary.

Stimulus diffusion is the idea that an imported practice from culture a into culture b is not assimilated but acts as a catalyst for a similar practice already present in nascent form in culture b.