While cognitive anthropologists have been studying the role of culture in cognition since the 1940s, mainstream theorizing in the cognitive sciences has tended to minimize and trivialize the role of culture. Some concepts that may help close the gap include the notions of cognitive practices and carrier behaviors – perceivable behaviors that provide cues to the underlying cognitive practices. Here, I present evidence from four sources converging on the conclusion that language serves as a powerful, but non-exclusive, carrier behavior in the diffusion of spatial frames of reference: (i) A survey of the available literature, comprising studies of some 50 individual populations from around the world, shows that preferences for relative frame use in small-scale space appear to be restricted to highly developed large-scale societies; (ii) a second meta-study comes to the conclusion that in all populations in which there is no linguistic bias for either extrinsic frame type (relative vs. geocentric), there is evidence for geocentric encoding preferences in recall memory; (iii) research with non-human primates and developmental studies with human infants point toward a prevalence of geocentric frame use in the early stages of both ontogenetic and phylogenetic evolution; (iv) modeling frame use against sociodemographic and environmental data from eight populations of North America and Asia points to language as a dominant factor, but also to consistent effects of urbanization, literacy, and formal education. The emerging view of language as a non-exclusive carrier behavior in the cultural diffusion of cognitive practices implies a reinterpretation of linguistic relativity.