A social pattern is found wherever we find a community which is more than an association of individuals, bound up with a coherent body of customs and ideas. There is an integrated unity or system in which each element has a definite function in relation to the whole which is passed down through learning from generation to generation.. Culture in this comprehensive sense is only found in human communities. Non-human primates do exhibit innovative behaviours that are passed by learning across generations but the examples are the exception to the rule.

Culture appears when a primate learns a particular pattern of behaviour for the first time and it is passed from one individual across generations by learning. This is not general in non-human primates but is a feature of isolated groups of a particular species expressed as 'food washing', and the use of 'food tools'.

Human culture is deeply rooted in biology. Its evolution is channelled by the biological rules of mental development, which in turn are genetically coded.

We can envisage the full chain of causation for gene- culture coevolution from DNA code to the formation of culture and back again through natural selection to changes in DNA gene frequencies.

Culture is based on human cognative development and is therefore ultimately a biological product. In many cases half or more of the variability in personality and cognition, is hereditary in origin.

Human cognitive development is severely constrained by human genes, and it is likely that the total amount of variability due to heredity and environment combined is only a minute fraction of the amount conceivable.

The classical explanation for the emergence of culture is that it is 'the necessary conditions of existence of the social organism'. To this the social institutions must correspond. In turn the necessary conditions of existence, at any stage of social development, depend on the geographical situation and the level of technology. This is true from the Stone Age to modern industrialism.

Basic to every form of social organization is the method of obtaining those items essential for human survival. In other words, how do the people of a particular society produce their food, clothing, tools, and other items that they need in order to live as human beings ? Cultural changes occur to maintain the organism in its steady state regarding well being of families, neighbours and nation. Through the ages technology has developed to conduct primeval cultural activities of human beings, such as war, tribal reunions, and bartering, as well as food production and providing shelter.

These 'necessary conditions of existence' shape the relationship of men to each other. Men carry on a struggle against nature and utilize nature to produce the necessities of life not in isolation from each other, not as separate individuals, but in common, in groups, in societies.

At different stages of development people make use of different modes of production and therefore lead different kinds of life. Correspondingly the whole social pattern, including religion, morals, customs, and ideas, differs from age to age. Whatever is man's manner of life, such is his manner of behaviour and of thought.

Within such a system we must ask of any custom, or magical practice, or marriage rule, or taboo, what contribution it makes to the total social life, and to the functioning of the total social system. The system will then be found to regulate the relationship of all the individuals in that society; it will provide such adaptation to the physical environment as to make possible an ordered social life; it is, in short, a method of survival.

Anthropologists no longer merely record and compare interesting customs, they compare total patterns, the web of thought and action. It is this web rather than any elaborate system of government that holds primitive societies together. Its bonds are internal—the habits of thought, of obligation, and of custom shape attitudes and behaviour.

This interior force is as real and authoritative as the external environment. The two together constitute the very nature of man in any particular society. This sum total of customs, rules, beliefs, marriage systems, and so on is called the culture of that society.

Culture maintains and enhances life.

It builds up and strengthens the group and helps it to satisfy its needs.

Culture, then, is the integrated system of learned behaviour patterns characteristic of the members of a society. It constitutes the way of life of any given social group. It is also a social heritage, transmitted from generation to generation and instilled into the minds of the young not only by education and initiation, but by the long, unconscious conditioning whereby each individual becomes the person he ultimately is. It thus becomes a form of social heredity.

Such an interpretation of the structure of the social organism is called 'functionalism'. The function of culture as a whole is to unite the individual human beings into more or less stable social structures, i.e. stable systems of groups determining and regulating the relations of those individuals to one another, and providing such external adaptation to the physical environment, and such internal adaptation between the component individuals or groups as to make possible an ordered social life. That assumption, I believe to be a sort of primary postulate of any objective and scientific study of human society.

It must be realized that such a pattern of society is an evolved harmonious whole. It survives and flourishes because it successfully maintains solidarity among its members, and to attain this, the institutions interacting within that society and constituting it contribute to that solidarity. The people concerned in such a society do not, of course, see the model constructed to explain it to the Western student of anthropology. The analysis into a pattern of institutional relationships is one thing, the actual working of the system is not realized to be 'a system' at all by the people within it. It is just the usual way things get done. The scheme as worked out by the functionalist would be quite unintelligible to them, for they would not be interested in considering the kind of questions with which the anthropologist is concerned.

Every culture, from that of a simple, food-gathering community like the Inuits to our own, has three fundamental aspects: the technological, the sociological, and the ideological.

This aspect of culture is concerned with tools, materials, techniques, and, in our day, machines. The tool is basic. The bronze axe is not only a superior instrument to the stone axe, it carries with it a more complex economic and social structure. Cultures may be defined in relation to their dependence upon such tools and techniques as the digging stick and spear, the hoe and garden, the herd of cattle, the ox-drawn plough.

This aspect of culture involves the relationships into which men enter, especially in work and in the family. These will always involve some form of co-operation, and may be basically free from exploitation, as among very primitive tribes, or may reflect some form of conflict, domination and subordination as in more advanced societies.

This aspect of culture comprises beliefs, rituals, magical practices, art, ethics, religious practices, and myths. In developed civilizations it includes the philosophies and legal systems of the society. Changes in technology and social organization will bring forth changes in the ideas, beliefs, in fact the whole spiritual life of man, but such ideas will always react back on the social organization. It is a reciprocal process.