Certain regions of the world are distinguishable as being associated with a particular human culture pattern, which is at once distinctive in character and also sufficiently strong to have survived as a readily identifiable entity over many centuries. Such geographical regions—e.g. China, Egypt, and France, to take a few only—can be said to be the home of a human group that each possesses a high degree of social cohesion, which in turn fosters a sustained though possibly fluctuating political identity, a characteristic way of life, and a material culture which can be recognized as individual and is capable of affecting other cultures to a varying degree. China has remained a significant political unit over several millennia, with its artistic and commercial products esteemed in Europe by Romans and moderns alike; Egypt, despite recurrent invasion and temporary subjection, has remained one of the focal areas of the eastern Mediterranean since biblical times at least; and there is no need to emphasize for the modern period the pervasive intellectual, political, and artistic influence of France.

In the designation of such human groups, association with a particular territory is implied. Use of the term “association” is deliberate, and invites the question: how much, if anything at all, of human activities, political groupings, and cultural efflorescence can be said to derive from the geographical location in which they develop? Could the city-states of classical Greece have evolved as they did if Athens had been located within the forests of Hercynian Europe; or is it reasonable to believe that Sung pottery might equally have been produced on the banks of the Zambezi? For many, such questions will be totally irrelevant, since it is possible to hold that the evolution of human society is a function of human will, wholly controlled by human impulse and predilection, with no or at most only incidental relationship to non-human agencies.