The Diversity of Peoples and Cultures

Map of the world whose continents are covered with colourful patterns, spirals, triangles and diamonds, merging into one another, on cream paper. — A map of the world drawn with weaving, embroidery and pottery patterns that blend into one another without clear borders. Erosophia illustration, réalisée avec l'aide d'une IA

A synthesis entry: it points elsewhere more than it demonstrates, and that is its role.

How many peoples are there on Earth?

This question calls for a surprising answer: nobody wants to answer it, and that is deliberate.

A figure without a definition

The United Nations estimates that there are about 476 million indigenous people in the world, spread across some 90 countries, and representing about 5,000 different cultures. They speak the great majority of the world’s seven thousand languages, and account for less than 5% of the population — but for 15% of the poorest.¹

Yet one point is truly remarkable.

There is no official definition of the word “indigenous”. Given the diversity of these peoples, no body of the United Nations system has adopted one.²

Instead, a set of criteria is used, the first of which is this: a person declares themselves indigenous, and the community accepts them as one of its own. Then come historical continuity with the societies that preceded colonisation, a strong link to territory, distinct institutions, language and beliefs, and the will to pass all this on.³

The official United Nations formula comes down to two verbs: it is better to identify than to define.⁴

A chosen, protective vagueness

Other pages on this site show that the number of the world’s languages depends on the rule one chooses, and that the same goes for the number of people who live in cities.

In those other cases, the vagueness is endured: it arises because each country built its statistics on its own. Nobody wanted it.

Here, the situation is different: the vagueness is chosen, and it protects. To define would amount to deciding for people who they are.

Faced with a vague category, then, it is better not to conclude straight away that the work has been badly done, but to ask instead: is this vagueness endured or chosen — and by whom?

A concrete example: in some countries, groups that international organisations count among indigenous peoples are not recognised as such by their own government. The same world, two ways of describing it, and the figures do not match.

What a culture is

A culture is everything that a human group passes on to those who come after it, without this passing through the genes. Language, ways of eating, of building, of dressing, of counting time, of naming kinship, of treating the dead, of telling the story of the world. None of this is inherited biologically: everything is learned, and everything can therefore change.

The oldest definition still in use dates from 1871. The British anthropologist Edward Tylor defined culture as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom — and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The decisive word is acquired.⁵

It is this mode of transmission that distinguishes a culture from a population. A population is defined by ancestry, a culture by learning — and the two do not coincide. A child born in one place and raised elsewhere will speak the language of the place where it grows up, not that of its ancestors.

And this transmission does not come only from parents. It also passes through peers of the same age and through adults who are not family — teachers, neighbours and, today, screens. That is why a culture can change quickly: all it takes is for one generation to learn more from its peers than from its parents.⁶

What is passed on can be grouped into a few domains, which recur everywhere.

Ways of doing: techniques, working gestures, cooking, care.
Ways of saying: language, stories, songs, memorised knowledge.
Ways of living together: kinship rules, forms of authority, ways of settling a conflict.
Ways of explaining: beliefs, rituals, representations of the world and of the afterlife.

No society invents all this alone, and none keeps it intact. A culture constantly receives elements from elsewhere, adapts them, abandons others. This is its normal state, not a sign of weakness or loss.

That is precisely why counting them is so difficult: what one would like to count has no fixed boundaries.

What a culture is not

A convenient but false image pictures cultures as closed boxes, each with its contents, lined up on a shelf. This encyclopaedia constantly shows the opposite:

Pasta with tomato sauce: The most “national” Italian dish is Arab through its pasta, American through its tomato, and was put together in a city then governed by Spaniards.
The Scottish kilt: According to a famous thesis, the short kilt was supposedly devised around 1727 by an English industrialist, so that his Highland workers could work more conveniently.⁷

This thesis is disputed, and what it rests on deserves to be known. It rests on an article, published in an Edinburgh magazine in 1785 — more than half a century after the events. It is the earliest trace of this story.⁸

It has, moreover, always irritated the Scots. According to a Scottish historian, the Highlanders of the time considered the story too ridiculous to answer.⁹

An invented tradition, or an invented invention? The case is not closed.

The Indian weavers of the nineteenth century: They did not disappear in the face of machine-spun yarn: they bought it and went on weaving.
The Japanese school model: In 1872, Japan acquired a new school system. It borrowed from two countries at the same time: the organisation — elementary school, secondary school, university — came from France; the pedagogy — the methods, the training of teachers — came from the United States.¹⁰

A specialist adds a nuance that applies to all the examples on this page: these were influences, not a model imported or copied as it stood.¹¹

Borrowing is not copying. One takes a piece here, another there, to make something that existed nowhere.

The Benin Bronzes: They were cast with brass that came from Germany.¹²

A culture is not a box. It is what a group makes of what happens to it.

What genetics shows

A word is needed about a notion that inevitably comes up. For a long time humans were sorted into large groups defined by appearance, and the word “race” was used for this. This word refers to a classification that people manufactured, at times that can be dated, and that served to dominate others. This is a matter of history, and is not disputed.

In 1972, the geneticist Richard Lewontin compared the genetic variation of humans at three levels: between people within the same population, between closely related populations, and between the large groups that were then called races.¹³

The result: about 85% of the variation is found between people within the same population. Less than 15% corresponds to the differences between the large groups. Other researchers have since redone the calculation and have arrived at the same result.¹⁴

The conclusion that follows is solid: what can be seen — skin colour, the shape of the face — is a very poor guide for guessing the rest. Two people who look alike can differ greatly elsewhere in their genes; two people who do not look alike can be very close.

A note on intellectual honesty: The statement “85% of the variation lies within groups” is correct. However, specialists debate the exact conclusions to be drawn from it, because of the way genes vary together rather than separately. This debate over scientific method does not call the general observation into question.¹⁵

Inequality and statistical invisibility

We need to return to the two figures from the beginning: less than 5% of the world’s population, but 15% of the poorest. Placed side by side, they show that the second is three times the first.

This ratio is the important fact, and it is more reliable than any of its decimal places: depending on which institution publishes it, the share varies, but the gap remains.¹⁶

What is more, it is not always known how many of them there are. In several countries, censuses do not ask the question, or ask it in a way that gives results very far from the estimates of indigenous organisations.

Not being counted is no mere detail: when people do not appear in public data, it is impossible either to measure the inequalities that affect them or to build policies to remedy them.¹⁷

The origins of the erasure

Let us return to the question from the beginning: is the vagueness endured or chosen? While chosen vagueness protects, statistical erasure can result from past policies.

For more than a century, Norway pursued a policy of assimilating the Sámi and other minorities. Children were placed in boarding schools, where they were forbidden to speak their language.

The Norwegian Parliament eventually set up a commission of inquiry. It worked for five years, gathered more than seven hundred testimonies, and on 1 June 2023 delivered a report of nearly seven hundred pages.¹⁸

What was done with it was out of the ordinary. On the day it was delivered, the report was read aloud, in full, over more than thirty-five hours, live on the national channel.¹⁹

A year and a half later, in November 2024, the Parliament issued an official apology to the Sámi, the Kvens and the Forest Finns — acknowledging the active role it had itself played in this policy.²⁰

One effect of this policy remains visible today: many descendants of these minorities do not know that they belong to them, because the name of their people was for a long time a word to be ashamed of.

The fog over the figures is sometimes the result of a policy that silenced, then made people forget.

Note 1

There are an estimated 476 million indigenous peoples in the world living across 90 countries.

Nations unies, “Journée internationale des peuples autochtones — contexte”

represent 5,000 different cultures

Nations unies, “Journée internationale des peuples autochtones — contexte”

They speak an overwhelming majority of the world's estimated 7,000 languages

Nations unies, “Journée internationale des peuples autochtones — contexte”

They make up less than 5 per cent of the world's population, but account for 15 per cent of the poorest.

Nations unies, “Journée internationale des peuples autochtones — contexte”

A figure without a definition

A chosen, protective vagueness

What a culture is

What a culture is not

What genetics shows

Inequality and statistical invisibility

The origins of the erasure

Notes and sources

Bibliography