This review describes some recent, unexpected findings concerning variationin spatial language across cultures, and places them in the context of thegeneral anthropology of space on the one hand, and theories of spatialcognition in the cognitive sciences on the other. There has been much concernwith the symbolism of space in anthropological writings, but little on conceptsof space in practical activities. This neglect of everyday spatial notions maybe due to unwitting ethnocentrism, the assumption in Western thinking generallythat notions of space are universally of a single kind. Recent work shows thatsystems of spatial reckoning and description can in fact be quite divergentacross cultures, linguistic differences correlating with distinct cognitivetendencies. This unexpected cultural variation raises interesting questionsconcerning the relation between cultural and linguistic concepts and thebiological foundations of cognition. It argues for more sophisticated modelsrelating culture and cognition than we currently have available.