HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Whats your favorite holiday? In Indonesia maybe
its Ied al Fitr, when the people make seasonal
commute to the house of their elders to reconnect
and strengthen family ties. Perhaps you like the
New Year, with its parades and colorful fireworks.
In some Western countries it can be Thanksgiving,
when family gathers to share food and watch
football. What about Halloween, when ghosts and
goblins go trick-or-treating at their neighbors
doors?
In every nation, the calendar is sprinkled with
holidays and other special days. Some holidays, like
Thanksgiving, began as a time to give thanks for
bountiful harvests or other good fortune. Others,
like the Fourth of July and Canada Day on July 1,
celebrate historic eventsthe birthdays of the
United States and Canada. Still others are
associated with religion. Halloween is linked to
Allhallows or All Saints Day, a holiday in the
Roman Catholic Church.
CONNECTING THE PRESENT AND PAST
Holidays and festivals connect the present with the
past. They give new generations of people the
chance to learn about people or events that shaped
their culture. One of the newest holidays in the
United States is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day,
celebrated on the third Monday in January. It
honors the contributions and teachings of a man
who led the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
For religious and ethnic groups, holidays and
festivals are a way to remember their roots. The
Jewish festival of Passover celebrates the successful
journey of the Jewish people from enslavement in
Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. At a special meal
called a seder, every food serves as a reminder of
the sufferings of the Jews in Egypt. People of
Mexican heritage remember the events of May 5,
1862, on Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for Fifth of
May). On that day, Mexicos army stopped a much
larger French army that was trying to take over
Mexico.
CELEBRATIONS AROUND THE WORLD
Countries around the world celebrate their own
holidays and festivals. In the Virgin Islands,
Thanksgiving comes on October 25. Instead of
honoring the harvest, it marks the end of the deadly
hurricane season. In Switzerland, people celebrate
Homstrom on the first Sunday in February. This
festival welcomes the coming spring season. During
the celebration, the Swiss burn straw dolls that
stand for Old Man Winter.
Chinese communities around the world celebrate
the Chinese New Year for two weeks. This festival
usually falls between January 21 and February 19.
The date changes from year to year because it is
based on the new moon. To prepare for the New
Year, families clean their houses and sweep away
any bad luck. The celebration includes fireworks
and parades.
INDONESIA
Indonesia is a tropical country made up entirely of
islands. How many islands? Its got more than
13,600 of them! Tigers, pythons, and crocodiles
live in thick rain forests that cover some of the
islands. Towering mountains and active volcanoes
rise across Indonesia, the worlds largest island
nation.
PEOPLE OF INDONESIA
For centuries, traders sailing between India and
China had to pass through Indonesian waters. Most
traders sailed through the Straits of Malacca, a
narrow waterway between Sumatra and Malaysia.
Over time, many different people settled in
Indonesia. The islands have many native tribes, too.
Today, about 300 different languages are spoken
across Indonesia.
Indonesia is the worlds fourth most populous
country, after China, India, and the United States.
Some Indonesian islands are very crowded. More
than half of Indonesias 242 million people live on
just one island, Java. Java covers an area about the
size of New York state. Jakarta, Indonesias capital
and largest city, is located on Java.
MOUNTAINS AND VOLCANOES
Mountains and volcanoes cover much of Indonesia.
In fact, Indonesia has more volcanoes than any
other place in the world. Volcanoes rise on all the
major islands except Borneo and New Guinea. A
volcano erupts somewhere in Indonesia at least
once a year.
Many Indonesian people live near volcanoes. Thats
because volcanic ash (dust that falls from the air
after an eruption) makes the soil good for farming.
When volcanoes erupt, they can kill many people.
THE SPICE ISLANDS
Long ago, Indonesia was famous for its spices. Part
of Indonesia was known as the Spice Islands. The
people of Europe greatly prized the spices of
Indonesia. Merchants carried the spices back to
Europe, where black pepper was more valuable
than gold!
Europeans fought over Indonesia throughout the
1500s and early 1600s. The Dutch eventually won,
and they took control of Indonesia. The Dutch
forced Indonesian people to grow spices and other
valuable crops, and they took all the wealth back to
Europe. Indonesia did not gain its freedom until
1949.
CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA
Rice is the main food of Indonesians. Rice is grown
throughout Indonesia, and it is usually eaten at
every meal. Black tea is a popular beverage.
One of Indonesias best-known arts is called batik.
Its a method of dyeing cloth to make beautiful
patterns. Batik is cloth painted with melted wax and
then dyed. The waxed areas do not absorb the dye.
When the wax is removed, the patterns remain.
Puppet shows are another famous art form of
Indonesia. The puppets are usually made from
wood or leather. Yet the audience never sees the
puppets. The puppeteer moves the puppets behind a
white screen to act out a story. The audience sits on
the other side. It sees only the shadows of the
puppets on the screen.
HINDUISM AND ISLAM
The shadow puppet plays often tell stories from
Hindu poems. The people of Bali, a small
Indonesian island, follow a form of Hinduism.
Hinduism is a religion that came to Bali from India.
Hinduism has greatly influenced the culture of
Indonesia.
Yet most Indonesians are not Hindus. They are
Muslims, or followers of Islam. In fact, nearly 90
percent of Indonesians are Muslim. That makes
Indonesia the largest Muslim country in the world.
Edited from Microsoft Encarta Kids 2006.
CULTURE
Culture is the most important concept in
anthropology (i.e. the study of all aspects of human
life, past and present). Culture is the patterns of
behavior and thinking that people living in social
groups learn, create, and share. Culture
distinguishes one human group from others. It also
distinguishes humans from other animals. A
peoples culture includes their beliefs, rules of
behavior, language, rituals, art, technology, styles
of dress, ways of producing and cooking food,
religion, and political and economic systems.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
Culture has several distinguishing characteristics.
(1) It is based on symbolsabstract ways of
referring to and understanding ideas, objects,
feelings, or behaviorsand the ability to
communicate with symbols using language. (2)
Culture is shared. People in the same society share
common behaviors and ways of thinking through
culture. (3) Culture is learned. While people
biologically inherit many physical traits and
behavioral instincts, culture is socially inherited. A
person must learn culture from other people in a
society. (4) Culture is adaptive. People use culture
to flexibly and quickly adjust to changes in the
world around them.
A. Culture Is Symbolic
People have culture primarily because they can
communicate with and understand symbols.
Symbols allow people to develop complex thoughts
and to exchange those thoughts with others.
Language and other forms of symbolic
communication, such as art, enable people to create,
explain, and record new ideas and information.
To convey new ideas, people constantly invent new
symbols, such as for mathematical formulas. In
addition, people may use one symbol, such as a
single word, to represent many different ideas,
feelings, or values. Thus, symbols provide a
flexible way for people to communicate even very
complex thoughts with each other. For example,
only through symbols can architects, engineers, and
construction workers communicate the information
necessary to construct a skyscraper or bridge.
B. Culture Is Learned
People are not born with culture; they have to learn
it. For instance, people must learn to understand a
language and to stick to the rules of a society. In
many societies, all people must learn to produce
and prepare food and to construct shelters. In other
societies, people must learn a skill to earn money,
which they then use to provide for themselves. In
all human societies, children learn culture from
adults. Anthropologists call this process
enculturation, or cultural transmission.
Enculturation is a long process. Just learning the
intricacies of a human language, a major part of
enculturation, takes many years. Families
commonly protect and enculturate children in the
households of their birth for 15 years or more. Only
at this point can children leave and establish their
own households. People also continue to learn
throughout their lifetimes. Thus, most societies
respect their elders, who have learned for an entire
lifetime.
Humans are not alone in their ability to learn
behaviors, only in the amount and complexity of
what they can learn. For example, members of a
group of chimpanzees may learn to use a unique
source of food or to fashion some simple tools,
behaviors that might distinguish them from other
chimpanzee groups. But these unique ways of life
are minor in comparison to the rich cultures of
human societies. Lacking speech, chimps are very
limited in what they can learn, communicate to
others, and pass on from generation to generation.
C. Culture Is Shared
People living together in a society share culture;
they collectively create and maintain it. Societies
preserve culture for much longer than the life of any
one person. They preserve it in the form of
knowledge, such as scientific discoveries; objects,
such as works of art; and traditions, such as the
observance of holidays.
Since no human society exists in complete
isolation, different societies also exchange and
share culture. In fact, all societies have some
interactions with others, both out of curiosity and
because even highly self-sufficient societies
sometimes need assistance from their neighbors.
Today, for instance, many people around the world
use similar kinds of technology, such as cars,
telephones, and televisions. Commercial trade and
communication technologies, such as computer
networks, have created a form of global culture.
Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult to
find culture that is shared within only a single
society.
North America, large game animals that roamed the
vast tundra provided people with food and materials
for clothing and simple shelters. When the earth
warmed, large Ice Age game animals disappeared,
and many land areas were submerged by rising sea
levels from melting ice. But people survived. They
developed new technologies and learned how to
subsist on new plant and animal species. Eventually
some people settled into villages of permanent,
durable houses and farms.
Cultural adaptation has made humans one of the
most successful species on the planet. Through
history, major developments in technology,
medicine, and nutrition have allowed people to
survive in ever-increasing numbers. Global
population has risen from 8 million during the Ice
Age to 7 billion today.
However, the successes of culture can also create
problems in the long run. Over the last 200 years,
people have begun to use large quantities of natural
resources and to produce a great amount of wastes.
The global population now consumes some crucial
natural resources, e.g. petroleum, timber, and
mineral ores, faster than nature can produce them.
Many scientists believe that in the process of
burning fuels and producing wastes, people may be
altering the global climate in unpredictable and
possibly harmful ways. Thus, the adaptive success
of the present-day global culture of production and
commerce may be temporary.
Edited from Microsoft Encarta 2006.

D. Culture Is Adaptive

Culture helps human societies survive in changing

natural environments. For example, the end of the
last Ice Age, beginning about 15,000 years ago,
posed an enormous challenge to which humans had
to adapt. Before this time, large portions of the
northern hemisphere were covered in great sheets of
ice that contained much of the earths water. In