Culture is a word for people's 'way of life', meaning the way groups do things. Different groups of people may have different cultures. A culture is passed on to the next generation by learning, whereas genetics are passed on by heredity. Culture is seen in people's writing, religion, music, clothes, cooking, and in what they do.

The concept of culture is very complicated, and the word has many meanings. The word 'culture' is most commonly used in three ways.

1. Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture.
2. An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior.
3. The outlook, attitudes, values, morals goals, and customs shared by a society.

Most broadly, 'culture' includes all human phenomena which are not purely results of human genetics. The discipline which investigates cultures is called anthropology, though many other disciplines play a part.

Anthropology is studying human beings and how they relate to each other. An anthropologist is a person who studies anthropology. Anthropologists believe that people use symbols to communicate (express) their experiences—who they are, what they believe, where they started.

Anthropologists call this use of symbols "culture". For example, immigrants (people who move from one country to another) may keep some of their customs and traditions from their old country. By keeping their culture in this way, they express who they are and that they came from somewhere else.
