Answer: Syncretism is the blending of cultures and ideas from different places.
Explanation: In what is now Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, there sits an ancient Christian cemetery, its gravestones marked with Nestorian crosses: a cross overlaid on a lotus blossom. The epitaph on one reads, "This is the grave of Jeremiah, the believer." The gravestone gives the year of Jeremiah's death, but then it also says, "the year of the sheep", referencing the twelve-animal cycle of the Chinese Zodiac. Faiths, cultures, and customs bounce off of and combine with one another in a process called syncretism.
