How closely correlated is culture to geography?

I am working on a story where I will take the geography of our world but install new peoples, cultures and histories. This will likely include fantastical elements as well as mundane. In working through this I have started with the base topographical map of the location I am working through and then began to paint in the cities and states of the groups I'll be writing about. In thinking of where the cities will be located and the backgrounds of those places I begin to wonder exactly how much I will need to look to our own history as a guide. As geography is paramount to where we have settled and why we have settled there, in addition to often also framing the narratives we tell ourselves about those locations and in turn shaping the cultures that grew around those narratives, how much credence should be placed on the existing cultures and histories of our own world when using the geography of Earth as a template for a fictional peoples set in the same location?

posted over 4 years ago

VerasVitas‭

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