2. Understanding Today's World

When we look at the globe, at first we see a single planet. Then, on closer inspection, we can tell immediately that the world has three segments: the air (clouds), the water (oceans) and the ground (land). These are segments. There are several ways of segmenting the world, which enable us to get a handle on the increasing complexity of today's remaining task of mission.

SEGMENTS	Geopolitics	Language	Culture and Race
SPECIES	Globe	Speech	Human
DICHOTOMIES	2 developed worlds: more/less	literate/illiterate	civilized/uncivilized
RACES	3 political worlds	5 macrophyla	20 civilizations 5 major races
MACROZONES	3 megacontinents	10 macrozones	20 culture zones
CONTINENTS	7 continents 7 macro regions	24 phyla	17 culture worlds
LOCALRACES	21 regions	100 zones	70 culture areas 71 local races
MICRORACES	185 nations 238 countries	680 language sets	395 culture clusters
PEOPLES	3,030 provinces	4,960 language clusters 13,510 languages	6,629 cultures 12,600 peoples
MINIPEOPLES	20,000 districts	30,000 dialects	24,000 minicultures (clans) 60,000 minipeopless (tribes, unimax groups)
MICROPEOPLES	1 million administrative units	6,500 audio languages	250,000 microcultures (clans)
MEGALOPOLISES	402 megacities	380 megalanguages	60 supercities, 20 supergiants
METROPEOPLES	50,000 cities over 10,000	2,000 trade languages	5,080 metropolises over 50,000
ETHNOVARIANTS	5 million specialist groups	983 lingua francas 70 international languages	100,000 urban people groups 100,000 variant ethnic names
SOCIOPEOPLES	10 million villages 1.2 billion families (homes)	100,000 sociolects	2 million sociopeoples (castes, occupations, etc)

Data snapshot date: 2000. For more detail see World Christian Trends, global diagram 22 and complete listings of languages, peoples, cities, races, provinces and countries in the World Christian Encyclopedia.