The Culture Simulation is to help you understand how cultures operate and grow. Everyone is born into a culture. It is the total way of life for a group of people. Since people have a common existence of being born, growing, learning, and dying, cultures have common patterns that they follow. For example, everyone must figure out their basic needs. So, every culture deals with people's basic needs. When you study how people meet their basic needs, this is called economics.
So in The Culture Simulation, you are going to build your own culture for a group of people. The four different tables in the art room will represent different geographical regions. It will be in these regions that your culture will be founded. Your objective is to grow your culture through four stages of development. The four stages of The Culture Simulation are the Foundational Stage, the Trade Stage, The Industrial Stage, and The Technology Age. Your culture will have characteristics that will demonstrate its growth. Each culture will have (1) POLITICS (2) ECONOMICS (3) SPIRITUALITY (4) ARTS (5) EDUCATION (6) KINSHIP.
During each stage, you will have specific tasks to complete called Cultural Growth Cards. By completing these Cultural Growth Cards, you will be able to spend Culture Tokens in order to strengthen your cultural characteristics. For example, a Cultural Growth Card task my be to read a handout and each group member of your culture will have to pass a test on the handout with an 80%. If your culture passes the test with 80%, you may get 5 Culture Tokens. Then you may spend a token to increase your POLITICS score for your culture.
However, at the end of each week, there will be a Historical Event Card. Each group will get a Historical Event Card that will happen to their culture. These events can help or hinder your culture. For example, perhaps your culture draws a Famine Historical Event Card. In this card, your culture may experience famine and have to pay 3 Culture Tokens or lose 2 ECONOMIC points.
The first stage of your culture will be the Foundational Stage. This stage is about your culture establishing itself in its geographical region. Your geographical region will help you with certain characteristics but be a hindrance to developing other characteristics. For example, the red table is the Cordillera region. This is a mountainous geographical region. A culture starting in this region has some advantages when it comes to resources and economics but has disadvantages when it comes to kinship because of its isolation.
