Although the term is used by anthropologists and archaeologists, it is used sparingly since it oversimplifies and in some cases even misrepresents the relationships between cultures.
The most frequently cited examples of mother cultures are Ancient Egypt in the Mediterranean, and the Olmec in Mesoamerica.
According to Quinn, every Mother Culture feeds its followers a particular, culturally-skewed mythology that greatly influences how these people perceive themselves and their environment.
Unfortunately, because we, as a culture, are destroying the Earth, while many of us would wish to stop this destruction, Quinn asserts that we cannot seem to find the "bars" of our proverbial cage because Mother Culture has given us certain assumptions that we assume without question, never recognizing them as false from the start.
Quinn has frequently claimed that two of the most fundamental (but false) premises communicated to us by our Mother Culture, in particular, include the following: "There is only one right way to live: ours" and "We must cling to civilization at all costs, even if it kills us.