Cultural+diffusion

Cultural Diffusion Cultural diffusion is a process in which characteristics of one society spread to another. Throughout history, this mainly happened through war, migration, and trade, the three main ways of contact between civilizations. Most aspects of a society's culture could be and were affected, including language, religion, type of government, art and architecture, and the way of life.

After Mesoptamia developed into a civilization, the Nile River valley society was founded. Unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt did not have to start out completely from scratch. Through trade, Mesopotamia was able to share new technologies with the younger Egyptian civilization. This enabled Egypt to grow faster and create a new culture sooner. Here, trade provided communication, and the technologies in Egypt were effected.
 * Examples**

In Classical China, the Silk Road played an extremely important role not only in China's economy, but in India, the Middle east, and the Mediterranean. Silk began to be valued in all of these societies instead of only in China. This trade route also provided a path for high class people to travel on and bring back informaton and ideas from other places.

These are only two examles of many times in which cultures blended. When warfare caused diffusion, if a society was conquered, the original culture could be wiped out completely. Sometimes, the two cultures blended to create a whole new culture.

Picture from: www.eyeconart.net


 * Created by**: Alexa DeAntonio 9/3/08