Whereas Nature is the material environment surrounding man –
Culture is the social environment of human living.

Geographical separation has lead to a multiplicity of cultures during the history of mankind which is to a large extend the history of cross-cultural interaction by contacts of persons, trade of goods, and exchange of thought. Cross-cultural interaction involving an individual or a group of people may consist in fully acquiring another culture (acculturation) or, in extremis ,in losing a previous culture (deculturation) and is to distinguish from transculturation, a term (coined in 1940 by Fernando Ortiz Fernández*) that encompasses the merger of concepts and additionally carries the idea of the consequent creation of new cultural phenomena.  The problems associated with the absorption of one culture by another have been extensively studied with regard to the ages of colonization and slavery. The phenomenon of transculturation, however, has been recognized in the European literature as well as in the post-colonial literature of Latin America, and, historically, even has had an early effect on the art of acting**. Interculturation (originally used to evaluate the mutuality and reciprocity in missiology and evangelization***) in our modern world of global economics and business management has become a term expressing multilingualism and multicultural education as an asset in human resources****.

*F. Ortiz, Contrapunteocubano del tabaco y elazúcar, Maria H. Gonzalez de Salcedo y BibliotecaAyacucho, Caracas (1978);

**F. M. Höfer y Tuñón, Culture et Théâtre: La Comédie 'à l’Espagnole' commeexemple précoce de transculturalité en Europe au XVIIe siècle, Dissertation, Univers. Paris-Sorbonne/ Univers. Düsseldorf (2009);

*** Cf. J. Blomjous, Development in Mission Thinking and Practice, 1959-1980.

Inculturation and Interculturation, African Ecclesial Review 22 (1980/6) 293-298;

****P.G. Chadraba, R.D.O`Keefe, Human resources: interculturation as an asset in the global marketplace, Journ. Internat.     Business and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4(2010)