Monday, March 26, 2012

DAY 26 Test Review and the Beginning of Culture/Anthropology

 

We did a review of the review sheet for next Monday's test today.  This was a good time to get your thoughts and notes in order - everything on the test is on the review sheet, at least the main concepts are so there will be no surprises at test time.

Then we started to watch The Gods Must Be Crazy to introduce several ideas about culture and the different ways that people do things and see things around them.
One of the best concepts in the opening of the film is the idea that people, when they live close to nature as we have done for the majority of our existence as a species (thousands/millions of years) have slowly developed ways to get food/water from the environment by developing clever ways of dealing with problems.  For example the San ('Xi, the main character in the film is from the San group of people of the Kalahari Desert) know how to collect water overnight or how to obtain it easily from the roots of plants that are not too evident above ground.  Modern, civilized people have actually adapted their environment to suit them.  The San have adapted to suit their environment (for the most part).

No comments:

Post a Comment