ABSTRACT
Individuals from a variety of African cultures were transported to an alien land from which there was no escape; had little or no contact with other members of their own culture; and were subjected to environmental pressures so extreme that there was no withstanding them. As the varying cultural patterns of the world's peoples attest, young humans are enormously adaptable, and older humans are exceptionally faithful to the ways of their forebears. Each new generation modifies its cultural inheritance, to greater or less degree, and in due course yesterday's "right" may become today's "wrong"—or vice versa. Depending on degree of variance from the general norms of the dominant national culture, these varying life styles become identifiable subcultures. India's castes are perhaps the best known, but the United States has them too. All Negroes, and in some circumstances Jews and Catholics, are members of castes. There are caste overtones among what sociologists and politicians call "the ethnic groups."
