Okay, so first off, hello to everybody. And welcome to American History 101. This is Professor Judge. First off, I'd like to say, welcome to the class, I really hope that you guys enjoy the class by the end of the semester. And hopefully I'm not setting the bar too high. I say that I hope you learn something from this class by the end of the semester as well. All of this, please do so, because there are a lot of questions that you may have maybe already answered in the syllabus. So I do highly encourage you to read through that and check that out first. In terms of how this is going to work in terms of how the notes are going to work. What I'm going to typically do here is post lecture notes that usually around 30 to 40 minutes or so in length. As far as I'm concerned that that's a pretty good chunk of time. It's usually around The 30 to 40 minute mark, that I start losing my students a little bit in terms of the attention spans, which I totally get. So I think 30 to 40 minutes are good chunks of time. And a lot of times, it's a good place to kind of leave off in terms of topics to to end there. And then to pick up with some of the new ones so that the whole story ultimately makes sense. Certainly during this entire time, you're more than welcome to pause at any time you you can rewind, and go back if you need to, as many times as you want. I do highly encourage you guys to take written notes as you are listening to this, because a lot of what I'm going to say there's a lot of detail to it. And sometimes writing things down, repeating them a little bit can help them stay fresh in your mind, and also helps you to kind of make a little bit more sense of it. So that way, you don't have to keep logging back into the system to really listen to the lectures over again. In your notes, you can kind of make a A little bit of a summary of the discussions and the the notes and things like that. So to begin the material officially, what I kind of want to do here in terms of the beginning of American history is to really focus first, on the three main groups that have the biggest impact on American history. And those groups are going to be the Native Americans, of course, the Africans and the Europeans. So I kind of want to go a little bit in that order. I want to start with the Native Americans. And in order to do that, I need to go a little bit further back in time, I want to kind of talk very briefly about how human beings as a species got their start on planet and where they got their start on the planet, how Native Americans ultimately were able to come to North Central and South America. And then what I want to do is look at Native American culture, particularly Native American culture prior to European contact and in some ways, kind of country. trust their cultural beliefs and practices with what the Europeans were kind of bringing over with them. And the main reason why I kind of want to do that contrast is because we're going to see is that these these major differences in how Native Americans and Europeans viewed the world and their place in it is going to be so different such that, unfortunately, these two groups are never going to work side by side with each other for the most part. So that kind of goes a long way into setting up why it's going to be tension and conflict between the Europeans when they come over here to the new world, and many of the Native American tribes. Once we kind of wrap up talking about Native American cultures and beliefs, I want to shift our focus and this may be the end of our lecture for the day, focus our efforts and our view here on Africa prior to European contact, so that would really be around the 13 and 1400s ad, so What were the cultural practices and cultural norms of the African tribal societies prior to the European showing up on the western shores of Africa? So I want to look at things like societal structure, I want to talk about cultural norms and religious beliefs and things of that nature. Because again, I think a lot of these these these things are important to talk about and and certainly worth knowing and understanding in terms of how they're going to fit into the bigger picture of American history as a whole. So, let's go back in time
300,000 or so years ago, and don't marry yourself to these dates, and I suppose that's something that's worth mentioning in my class in general, is that I will give you dates as we go along. But I will never ask you for specific dates on quizzes or tests or anything that that's a graded assignments. I will never ask you You know what happened, what major event happened on this date, or on this day what major event occurred. And the main reason why I don't do that is because I feel as though if you're so hyper focused when you're studying on dates and times and things like that, then to me, you're missing what what I would really want you to get out of this course you're missing the far bigger, more important things. So yes, I will give you dates. But no, I will never ask you for dates on quizzes or tests or anything like that. So now that that's out of the way 300,000 years ago is when homosapiens and that's us as human beings as a species first started to show up in the worlds and we can kind of trace the roots of Homo sapiens back to somewhere around East Central Africa. Now, that's not to say that human like creatures didn't exist before. Homo sapiens, we have Neanderthals we have other hominids Groups certainly that existed for millions of years on the planets prior to Homo sapiens. So human like creatures have been on the planet for an awfully long time. So what was it then about Homo sapiens that kind of made them a little bit different? Why are Homo sapiens going to be the inheritors, so to speak, the the species, the human like species that kind of comes to dominate the earth. And what's interesting here to me, is that's very, very recent studies within the last few years, which is interesting. It's kind of now suggested that homosapiens and Neanderthals lived side by side for a while. And in fact, that it may not have been Homo sapiens that defeated the, you know, the Neanderthals in conflict or anything like that. We didn't push them out. what science is now starting to believe is that Neanderthals and homosapiens may have actually been intermingled and that human beings today have Neanderthal DNA within them. So that's pretty interesting. But what we do know is that homosapiens once they did start to show up in the world again around central Eastern Africa, slowly started to expand out from there and slowly started to come to take over and dominate the world's becoming the dominant species on the planet. Over the next few hundred thousand years, homosapiens began to spread themselves outward into places like the Middle East, eventually into Western central Southern Eastern Asia, into parts of Europe, and then eventually into the Far Eastern reaches in places like Siberia, which is owned by Russia today.
It's not really until around 20,000 years ago or so that we see these homosapiens start to slowly make their way from what's present day Siberia, across to what's present day Alaska and parts of North America. So when ultimately saying That's no human like creatures really existed. At least homosapiens didn't really exist in North Central South America until around 20,000 years ago, which isn't all that long ago in the grand scheme of things. So how did these homosapiens get here? Mr. Judge? I mean, if I look at a map of the world today, I can see that there's a pretty significant ocean, the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska. So how then did homosapiens get here in the first place? Hopefully, at least some of you are thinking to yourselves that it was because of the major ice age that was going on around 20,000 or so years ago, one of the last major ice ages that the Earth has really experienced during that 20,000 year or so ago, Ice Age, what we see is that much of the Earth's ocean waters were trapped in massive glaciers that that aren't nearly as big as they used to be. And because so much water was locked up in those schools. We believe that parts of what is the bottom of the Bering Sea today may have been exposed. And that allowed a kind of a landbridge to develop, so to speak, that allowed these homosapiens, then to cross over into North Central and South America. And then eventually, once that ice age ended, all that water kind of melted out of the glaciers went back into the oceans. And that's where the Bering Sea kind of was reintroduced. So over the next 5000 years or so, after homosapiens crossed over into Alaska, we start to see them slowly spread themselves out into Canada, America, and eventually into parts of Central and South America. So that is an essence how Native Americans got here in the first place, which means that they've been here for you know, 15 to 20,000 years ago, so they've been here a pretty long time. Now, when we start to talk about Native American culture, it's very important to note here That within the context of this class, we are going to unfortunately have to paint in very broad strokes when it comes to talking about Native American culture. And the reason why I say that we have to generalize we have to talk in broad strokes is because the there's major diversity in Native American beliefs and culture and customs and cultural practices, depending on what part of North Central or South America you're talking about. The Inuits for instance, and other Native American cultures and groups that existed in places like Alaska and northern Canada. Their existence is going to be one of one of it's really heavily based on Arctic survival. So their practices are going to be very, very different and their religious beliefs and their their customs are going to be very different from say, the Plains Indians of present day Midwestern United States of America, those groups were much more nomadic they moved around hunting and and following migratory animal, particularly the Buffalo. So so their practices and religious beliefs are going to be very different from East coasts, present day United States, Native American groups that mainly settled in societies that weren't particularly nomadic, that they did some farming, they did some fishing, they did some hunting, and they lived in in slightly larger societies. Whereas, you know, Plains Indians lived in typically smaller groups of say 234 hundred, sometimes maybe a part of a larger, you know, that there's two or three or 400 being a branch of a much larger tribe. A lot of Native American cultures in the eastern coastline of the United States of America are going to be a part of much larger, Native American tribes that sometimes numbered in the thousands. And of course, they're going to be very different from the civilizations and Native American civilizations that we see in Central and South America, like the Aztec, for instance, I mean, correct major cities and have a population that was in the hundreds of thousands or millions at its territory at its its territorial peak.
So we're talking about vast empires here with, again, cultural practices and beliefs that are very different. So there's, again, a wide array of diversity here. And unfortunately, we just don't have the time to talk about all this great and interesting diversity amongst the Native American tribes. But I do want to point it out there, you know that again, we're we're painting in generalities here when we're, you know, we reference Native Americans here, unfortunately, we were painting in broad strokes. So let's talk a little bit about those those Native American cultural beliefs. And I'm going to kind of limit these again to what we're going to see mainly in Central and South America, and kind of what you're going to see in present day United States of America as well in terms of native American beliefs and again, very, very general broad strokes. And again, what I want to do here to highlight these Native American beliefs is to contrast their beliefs and their view of the world with the European attitudes and views of the world, when the Europeans start coming over here in the 15 1600s. So there are many, many differences between the two groups, unfortunately, that are going to lead to them, not ever going to be able to coexist with one another. And I'm not saying that it would have been impossible. Because we as human beings are capable of great things when we want to be capable of them. And unfortunately, what we're going to see is that the Europeans aren't aren't really going to be particularly interested in working with Native Americans in a lot of ways. So part of the contributing factor here that's that's worth noting before we get into the cultural differences, is one of the first major European groups that comes over here to the new world is the Spanish And when the Spanish come over here some of the first people that they send over here to the new world were Conquistadores. People like her Nan Cortez, Francisco Pizarro, a few others. Conquistador, if you're unfamiliar with the term in Spanish means conquer. So that tells you everything that you need to know about Spain's plans for the New World, Spain isn't sending diplomats over here, Spain isn't sending government officials over here to sign treaties. They're sending military people over here, they're sending soldiers and with the goal of conquering the new world and bringing it under their control. So the Spanish never really went over with any intention of trying to coexist, or to live side by side with the Native Americans. So coming over here with that attitude, really sets up a lot of the rest of the abysmal history between the European groups that come over here to the new world. And the the Native Americans. Okay,
so let's talk about some of the major differences in terms of culture between the two groups. One of the first areas I kind of want to focus on is attitude towards land and the environments. Now again, painting in broad strokes here, but when you look at Native American tribes, particularly in say, Eastern portions of the United States of America, present day United States of America, what you see are Native American tribes that really didn't emphasize trying to exert dominance over nature, their approach to nature, to environment to the land is much more so around the concept of coexisting with it. How can we, as the Native Americans live in harmony with nature so that we, we ultimately take what we need from it? hunting, fishing, farming, we are certainly taking some resources out of the environment, but how can we do Do it in a way that is respectful that is living in harmony with nature, so that we don't take more than we need. And we don't cause any more harm to nature than we absolutely need to. There is a deep belief amongst Native American cultures and tribes when it comes to living within the environments, that the environment, it has the spirits, and that all things in the world have spirits. And that's why greed and taking more than you need from the environment really doesn't go hand in hand with those types of beliefs. You don't want to take more than you need because you don't want to upset the spiritual realm. You don't want the spiritual world to you know kind of mark you as an enemy and to come after you. So the only way you can really do that is to be respectful towards nature to live among it rather than trying to conquer it. And ultimately not taking again more than you need. Contrast that attitude with what we see from Europe right now in the four tene hundreds 1500s once the European start coming over here to the new worlds, what we see going on in Europe is a very different attitude towards land and the environments. By this time period, Europeans believed that God had given human beings, the earth to end the resources of the earth to be cultivated and ultimately to be exploited for for human beings benefit. So therefore, it's human beings responsibility. And this is built even into the religious beliefs. It's humans responsibility to conquer the world to conquer the land that you're on, to exert dominion over it, to cultivate it, to farm it and to ultimately exploit the resources on it. And they truly believe that this is what God wants for it. This is why God put the natural resources on the planet to be exploited by humans. And if you as a human being are not doing this, if you are not cultivating every square inch of land and exploiting every square inch of resources that the land has, then you're going against God's plan, you're going against God's will for these resources and for this land. Now, when you couple that attitude with the fact that by the 14 1500s, every square inch of the European continent in terms of land is owned by somebody, it's either owned by a royal family in a country or it's owned by the nobles, or it's owned by other wealthy landowners.
But every square inch of land is owned by somebody. Now, when you have a commodity like land that is in very high demand, and in very, very short supply, any student of economics 101 will be able to tell you that when you have something that's high demand and low supply, that that's going to raise the price of that particular product because everybody wants it and you can't get your hands off. So land in Europe right now has a substantial dollar value attached to it. And then even think about land and property today in 2020. In the United States of America, or the modern times the United States of America, let's say you hypothetically own 50 acres of land right now in America, it's a pretty decent chunk of land. Think of all the different ways today you can make money off of that 50 acres of land, certainly, you could farm it, if you have those skills. I don't have those skills. I'm not a farmer, you could give me 1000 acres of land, I wouldn't know what the hell to do with it because I'm useless. But even not knowing how to farm the land, I could still make a decent amount of money off of 50 acres. I could choose to develop that land and and you know, build hotels and restaurants and apartments on that land, and I could charge people rent to use it. Let's say I don't even want to do that. What I could simply just do is just choose to sell that 50 acres of land for instant cash in my own pocket. So there are many ways even today in 2020, owning land can can profit can be a profit for you or to benefit financially off of it. So that European attitude towards land that in essence, land equals money is a big part of their belief system. And that is a big attitude that they're going to bring with them over here to the new world. When the Spanish start to show up on the the Caribbean islands and in Central and South America, when the English start to show up on the shores of present day East Coast, United States of America and other European groups Besides, they're coming over here and they're seeing instant cash dollars. Science is what they say. They see all this open land that that that's in their attitude barely being used and cultivated by the Native Americans. Again going against God's will for the resources of the earth. And they see massive economic opportunity for themselves. So that clearly is going to be a huge disconnect between the two groups. This attitude towards land and the environment in which the Native Americans really emphasize coexistence with nature, whereas the European attitude is more so, exert dominion over the land and the resources to exploit it for financial gain is not going to jive up with one another. Another major difference between the two groups is going to come in the area of property and ownership. Now, when I say property, it may sound like I'm you know, Mr. Judge, this sounds very similar to land in the environment. And to some extent there is but there's a big difference between it too. When I say property and ownership, what I really mean here is is communal ownership versus private ownership. And in the particular case, the Native Americans or at least many Native American tribes. But certainly not all of them. There is more so a communal belief here that for instance, you know, if, if I'm a farmer for my tribe and Native American culture, I'm not growing crops just for me and my family, I'm growing crops that I'm going to then, you know, when I say donate, but in essence, I'm a farmer that is growing crops for the entire village and everybody's gonna benefit off of that not just me and my family. I don't own those crops, even though I cultivated them. It's communal ownership. I don't own this bit of land. We all in it collectively as a tribe. And and that's okay. And that works because I live in a small society in which I'm relied upon as a farmer to support the, you know, the existence of the tribe. And hunters do the same thing. When groups of hunters go out and bring back food. It's not just for themselves and their families. It's really the entire tribe. And that way since we're all you know, kind of contributing you All of our efforts are seen as equal contributions. And that's going to have a part to play in gender norms as well. But that'll be its own separate category. And we'll come back to that. So in Native American culture, again, it's much more so communal ownership of things. we collectively, you know, own this land around us, we collectively share the animals that we hunt and the fish that we catch, and the food that we grow, and the clothes that we make, we all do this for each other. And we all we all benefit because we all take our own skills and our own knowledge and we all use it for the benefit of the larger group as a whole.
Europeans, on the other hand, have a very different approach to ownership. And I would say that that attitude towards ownership still exists in much of the Western world today in 2020. European attitudes of ownership and property is that of it's privately owned, if I you know, own this bit of land it is mine. And you're not welcome on this land unless I gave you permission to be on it. Any crops that I grow on my land or for me and my family or I could choose to sell them for profit. But this isn't for the entire village, this is just for me, I own these these crops, I own this house, I own this land, these things are legally mine. And I really don't have the intention of sharing them with the community as a whole. Again, so we we kind of see her another major difference in attitude towards property towards ownership. And then again, that's that's going to create some cultural friction between the two groups. Speaking of gender norms, since they just came up, what we're going to see is that Native American attitudes towards women within the tribe is going to be much more progressive compared to what we see with the European counterparts or Around the same time. Now, I'm not. I don't want to oversell this because most Native American tribes were still very much patriarchal, particularly when it came to government and major decision making of the tribe that was still largely dominated by males, which I agree still kind of sucks from the female perspective. But compared to what was happening in Europe, around the same time, Native Americans were much more progressive. So So Mr. Judge How then, what are the major differences? Women were seen as being important contributors to society, even though they were given dominion over things that were kind of separate from men. In Native American cultures, men did most of the hunting men did most of the military service. Women did most of the farming women did most of the food collection and preservation and distribution. Women were Considered to be extremely important contributors to society because they raised children to grow up to eventually be the leaders and, you know, adult contributors to society. So women were given a tremendous amount of respect within society, even if it wasn't always 100% equality. I'm certain examples some specific examples fill. Female village elders in some cases, would be the ones who select the Chiefs for each of the tribes, as well as the men that would speak at the council meetings on the villages behalf. And those men were fully expected those representatives were fully expected to take the opinions of women as well as men into consideration when making major decisions for the tribe. Women could also influence decisions privately and even if women couldn't necessarily go to tribal meetings or cast a vote. Women found ways to exert influence They could do it privately with their husbands or you know, their brothers or fathers, they could certainly influence the the decision making and and societal beliefs and attitudes of their children. Because women were the ones who are doing most of the child rearing here. Women also found ways of vetoing votes that they disagreed with. Again, even the women couldn't vote themselves, there were ways of exerting influence over a particular vote that they disagreed with. And an example of that would be if the men of the tribe decided to, let's say, go to war with their neighboring tribe, and the women disagreed with that decision. women couldn't say I vote against it, because again, many of them couldn't vote or none of them could vote, but because women controlled food distribution within the tribe, what they could say is we can't stop you from going to war with that rifle tribe, but we're not going to give you any food for it. So good luck. And then that way they could influence the decision. So again,
while it's not a 100% equality, what we do see is much more opportunity for women within Native American tribes to exert influence to have their opinion heard, and we're expecting respected individuals within the society. Europe, on the other hand, has a much different attitude towards women, and the for 1314 1500 1600 euro. Most women in essence, were considered second class citizens in a lot of ways. Outside of maybe the royal families and the wealthiest families which would have been a very, very small group of people. Most women's opinions, particularly when it came to politics and decision making within society were simply ignored. women weren't seen as major contributors to society women. For the Most parts stayed in the home they did the child rearing more or less as baby factories, you know, they they cooked they cleaned, but those efforts were not considered as integral as as the contributions of men society and therefore women were afforded very little respect. Women really couldn't didn't have any opportunities to work to financially contribute to the family and even in certain jobs that women could work they were paid significantly less than men were so many of their efforts, you know, really didn't go very far unfortunately, anyway. And it's, it's it's unfortunate since the crappy way things were back then. So again, even though things weren't hundred percent equal, for men and women with a Native American tribal society, certainly a much better situation for women and Native American cultures then for European women at the same time period. The last major area of focus that I want to kind of talk about is religious beliefs and religious differences. Now again, I'm painting an extremely broad strokes here when I say that Native American tribes and again, this is going to vary very widely. We're certainly very diverse. But broadly speaking, Native American tribes could more or less be believed to be somewhat polytheistic in nature, certainly that the world is a very spiritual world and that everything has a spirit attached to it.
We do see a certain
belief have tremendous respect for ancestors and that they could be the prayed to certain beliefs of making sacrifices to the you know, to the spirit world and to the different gods, again, depending on what Native American tribe you're talking about. But again, for the most part here very spiritual based polytheistic belief in many different gods Europeans here in the 14 1516. hundred's really is just one overarching religious term, and that is Christianity. And for the European groups, Christianity is the end all be all. It's the only religion that is acceptable. And anything else that runs counter to Christianity is heretical. It is devil worship, it's wrong. You need to be a Christian or your souls damned to hell. Now, before we go any further here with this, there's an important distinction that I need to make here when it comes to the word Christian or Christianity. I say European groups are coming over here to the new world as Christians. And I mean that in the literal sense, and what I think needs to be distinguished here is that a lot of times my students and really a lot of people in the world sometimes think that the word Catholicism are Catholic and Christian anity are interchangeable terms, and they're not there's a big difference between them. If you are a Christian it believes it means that your religious belief is such that you believe Jesus Christ
was the son of
God. If you believe that whatever religion you are, if your religion believes that you are a Christian automatically, um, how is Catholicism different from that? Catholics do believe that Jesus is the Son of God, therefore, Catholics are Christians, but there are many, many different branches or religions of Christianity. Catholicism is one branch of Christianity, but some other branches are Lutheranism, Episcopalian, ism, Presbyterianism, all many different examples of Protestant faiths, but because all of those different religions believe that Jesus is the Son of God, they are all Christian. So when I use the term Christian, it's called Kind of an umbrella term, and Catholicism and Lutheranism and Presbyterianism, and baptism, Baptists, those are those are all branches underneath Christianity. So again, just an important distinction to make
there.
When the Europeans come over here to the new world, they're bringing Christianity with them. And they are hardcore believers in the faith. So when they come over here to the new world, it their attitude is convert in essence or die. They'll offer conversion to the Native American tribes that they come in contact with, and some very, very few, but some Native Americans will choose to convert, those that do not are going to be considered fair game for the Europeans to attack, to exploit, to enslave, to kill and everything else that goes along with it. And they have that religious justification as far as they're concerned. Because you as Native Americans. rejecting Christianity, you're rejecting God, you're choosing the path of heresy, you're choosing the path of evil, and therefore I have moral and religious justification to kill you and to take your lands.
Now, clearly, that's an awful attitude. But again, unfortunately, that is the attitude that many of the European groups brought over here with them to the new world. That's not just the Spanish in Central and South America, that's also going to be the attitude of many of the English to come over here to the new world. And a few other groups as well. The French will be the lone exception, but Well, that's much later down the road and we'll get to that eventually.
So again,
not not to oversimplify this point here, but those four major categories that we just discussed, differences in attitude of land and the environment,
of ownership
of gender norms, and a religion All of those major differences are going to lead to some pretty significant disconnects between the two groups, such that unfortunately, they're never going to be able to coexist with one another.
Okay, so with
the last little bit of this, this lecture here, I do want to kind of shift gears a little bit and move to Africa prior to European contact in the early 1400s. Now, again, another important distinction to make here is that when we're talking about Africa, right here in the 1400s, we're really talking about Sub Saharan Africa specifically. Now, what I mean by Sub Saharan Africa, if you're unfamiliar with the term sub meaning below, Sahara, meaning below the Sahara deserts, and again, please reference the PowerPoint that I'll put up here in terms of maps and stuff, so you can kind of see, see this, you know, in in real time, so you don't have to imagine it, especially if you're geographically challenge which is okay. But we're talking about real traditional tribal African societies that are south of the Sahara Desert. Anything north of the Sahara Desert, more talking about North Africa has much more Arab cultural roots and is much more Islamic and its religious beliefs. And that's going to be true really since the seven hundreds or so ad when Islam spread itself pretty rapidly across North Africa. So when we talk about Africa here, prior to European contact, we're talking about more traditional tribal Sub Saharan Africa. So let's talk about cultural beliefs, what was significant to them, and when we talk about African tribal society, what was the single most important unit to them? And in unarguably, that social unit that is the most important to them is family. And that's not surprising at all, I mean, think about it even today in your own life. If I were to ask you, who are the most important people that have had the biggest impact on you in your life to this point that have gotten you to this point? I would imagine that most of us would probably say, our family, no matter how you choose to define family. So what is it that that our family has has done for us? How have they contributed to us being still alive today? And getting us to this point, and I'm sure many of you are probably thinking to yourselves Well, the financial certainly financial cert, you know, you know, from the day you were born, your family has financially supported you by giving you a house food that you eat clothes that you wear. So I mean, of course, all those things are important. Logically logical supports emotional support. Certainly all very important things as well. I mean, when we have awful days, we have days that, you know, shake the, the faith that we have in humanity. And unfortunately, I feel like we've seen an awful lot of those lately. Your family, of course, are people that you go to for that, you know, psychological emotional support, and that's certainly important for our success in life. Let me throw a few other things at you, though, that maybe perhaps you didn't consider that your family has contributed to in order to, for you to be very successful in life, morals and social norms. Your family doesn't sit you down and say, Okay, today we're gonna talk about morals and social norms. It's not an explicit lesson that they give us in life. It's more of an implicit one that we kind of pick up from them over time, but nonetheless, are things that are extremely important in order for us to be successful in life. Let's take a social norm for instance. Um, let's say you are walking down the street in your neighborhood one day, and you see a person that is completely naked coming towards you in the opposite direction. Now think about again, genuinely think about this, what would your natural instinct be about that person? Um, you know, for some of us, our first reaction might be to cross the street, because we think that this person might not be you know, they they
might be mentally ill,
they might be drunk or on drugs, and they might be dangerous. So maybe some of us would run up to that person clearly because they may need some help and and see if we could try to help them out, maybe Call an ambulance. I'd certainly think that most of us if not all of us would probably call the police because clearly there's something off about this person now inherently a naked person is not dangerous, um, our society
but because this person,
public or within society, that person, we automatically assume something wrong with them. And think about how difficult or how much difficulty that person is going to have going through the rest of life. I mean, if they continue to walk around society, naked, they're going to continue to have police called after them, they're going to continue probably to be arrested and taken in. Most people in life, we're probably going to avoid them. They are not going to have any friends, their family is probably going to be you know, not happy with them, maybe even shun them. They're never going to be able to get a job. They're never going to have you know, success in life. Have you know, get married and have a family or anything like that because they're violating that social So social norms having a massively important part to play in, in our worlds and in terms of being successful in our family certainly gives us that. So family in Africa is the end all be all when it comes to societal units. Now there are additional points here that I want to talk about in terms of African tribal society. But we're kind of already over the amount of time that I wanted to put in here. So I'll cap this off now and we'll pick up with African tribal society with the next lecture. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me
