3.04 Social Stratification

• Introduction
• Learn
• Try It
• Task

Introduction

Have you ever been in a home where the basement was really cold and the upstairs was hot? Cold layers of air stay in the basement and warmer layers settle upstairs. When layers occur in nature it is called stratification. Layers occur almost everywhere in nature: in tissues of the human body, rock formations in the ground, atmospheres around the earth, and, important to our course, layers occur in societies of every nation on the earth. 

We call these layers strata and the process of layering stratification. You will explore the stratification of societies in this lesson.