Lizzie's Morning Activity Index

<< Children in an Indian village sample an American toothpaste. Photograph by Joe McNally

Follow a young American from bed to breakfast to bus and see how many cultures have touched her world.

You may not have known it, but you interact with other cultures every day. You might wear clothing made in Asia, eat candy imported from Europe, or watch movies produced in Australia. Perhaps you like Latin American food or African music. In any case, you're part of what geographers call cultural diffusion—the spread of items and ideas across boundaries.

Get a glimpse of cultural diffusion in our very short story, "Lizzie's Morning." Before she even leaves the house, she's encountered things from more than a dozen different cultures!

Then take a look at your morning and see how it compares with Lizzie's.

Younger Xpeditioners: Pick one of the countries that Lizzie encounters in the morning and think of questions you would ask a kid who lives there.

Older Xpeditioners: Print a blank world map from our Xpeditions Atlas and mark all the countries that played a role in Lizzie's morning. Use the MapMachine Atlas to learn what other items those nations produce.

Parents: Cultural diffusion includes information and ideas as well as objects, a concept that children may have trouble grasping. One way to begin a discussion might be to look up familiar words in a dictionary that provides etymology. Two easy examples are "hamburger" (named for a German city) and "sandwich" (named for an English aristocrat).

You might also look at some of the ideas that shape your society and make it a family project to research their origins. How did ancient Greek governments, for example, influence modern democracies? What are modern spiritual seekers learning from Asian traditions? (Amazon.com lists 460 books with "Tao" in the title.)

For a striking example of cultural diffusion, look for pictures of the Goddess of Democracy carried by Chinese students in their 1989 Tiananmen Square rallies. She bears remarkable similarities to the Statue of Liberty. (You can find a photograph on page 115 of the July 1991 issue of National Geographic magazine.)