Mother culture

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A mother culture is a term for an earlier people's culture that has a great and widespread influence on some later cultures and people. Though the original culture may fade, the mother culture's influence grows for ages in the future. Later civilizations either learn and build upon their old ways or can learn them through peaceful or military assimilation. Although the term is used by anthropologists and archaeologists, it is used sparingly since it oversimplifies and in some cases even misrepresents the relationships between cultures.

The most frequently cited examples of mother cultures are Ancient Egypt in the Mediterranean, and the Olmec in Mesoamerica.