This chapter contains Bernhard Giesen’s introduction to the lecture script Human Societies. It highlights his cultural perspective on the evolution of human societies, which is strikingly different from other introductory accounts. While not denying the importance of material factors for structural or institutional change, his focus is on the world of symbolic interaction, social communication, and cultural interpretation. Culture is conceived in terms of signs and stories but also as rules and distinctions that allow us to interpret our world in a meaningful way, to overcome critical situations in interaction, and to answer questions in an acceptable way. Giesen offers four different cultural perspectives on human societies, namely production, classification, circulation, and representation. Each ideal type of society is characterized by novel modes of production, classification, circulation, and representation. Yet, seemingly outdated modes do not simply disappear but continue their existence in the cultural repertoire of a society: “All of them remain with us.”