{"id":1049,"date":"2007-11-24T20:59:18","date_gmt":"2007-11-24T20:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2007\/11\/24\/every-culture-has-a\/"},"modified":"2007-11-24T20:59:18","modified_gmt":"2007-11-24T20:59:18","slug":"every-culture-has-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/24\/every-culture-has-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Culture Has A &#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; has a what!?!?I don&#8217;t know how many times I&#8217;ve heard the phrase &#8220;Every culture has a story about a flood&#8230;&#8221;  This is very annoying because a) it is not true (I can think of several cultures that do not) and b) it is very Euro-centric, as are most phrases that start with &#8220;Every culture has a&#8230;&#8221;So, I decided to enter the phrase &#8220;Every culture has a&#8221; into Google and see how many other stupid ideas I could find.<!--more-->The list is not very long because this exercise, while interestring in principle, can get a bit old.  But here is what I found before I tired of it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Every culture has a folk song about the circle of life&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a creation story, and every culture has a priesthood to interpret the story for them<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has its fried dough<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a system for educating their young<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a version of elves<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a jewel that pops out the berries<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has some particular form of puppet theater. Not every culture has a form of acting theater<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a word for experiences and understandings shared by people the world <\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a &#8220;cultural unconscious&#8221; that drives the behavior of its members.<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has some kind of flatbread that is served frquently with all kinds of meals<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a state religion or two<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a distinct and colorful folkloric tradition<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a holiday (or two) to observe<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a creation story jealously guarded by a priesthood<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has drugs<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a food that others would find just horrifying<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a chicken dish<\/li>\n<li>Every Culture Has a Pancake<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a catty corner<\/li>\n<li>Every culture has a legend about a great flood..<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, I admit that about in about four of these cases, the word &#8220;almost&#8221; preceded the word &#8220;every.&#8221;  This, however, does not make the statement more likely to be true.  For instance, the last one on the list,  about the great flood, is from a recent item in Discover suggesting that a comet caused the great flood, claims that &#8220;Almost every culture has a legend about a great flood&#8230;&#8221;  Unless &#8220;almost&#8221; means &#8220;A small number of&#8221; then the statement is grossly incorrect.Ah, surely, the world would be such a better place if only it were true that every culture has a pancake&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; has a what!?!?I don&#8217;t know how many times I&#8217;ve heard the phrase &#8220;Every culture has a story about a flood&#8230;&#8221; This is very annoying because a) it is not true (I can think of several cultures that do not) and b) it is very Euro-centric, as are most phrases that start with &#8220;Every culture &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/24\/every-culture-has-a\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Every Culture Has A &#8230;.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[147],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-gV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}