“The Gods Must Be Crazy” is a 1980s South African comedy classic . The protagonist, a traveling bushman, encounters a modern civilian for the first time. The movie became an international hit. The bushman character was based off of the !Kung peoples of South Africa, a hunter-gatherer society (IMDb, 2016). With this however, the movie displayed many stereotypes, which is defined by Richard D. Bucher as, “…an unverified and oversimplified generalization about an entire group of people (Bucher, 2000). So in the interest of dispelling some of these stereotypes, we will examine the !Kung peoples thought their early history, language, beliefs, social structure and hierarchy, gender roles, and recent history. The !Kung are a San people that live
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It is a Khoisan language; a language known for its use of clicks. The clicking comes from the use of the tongue “clicking” on the think roof of the mouth. The !Kung people are famous for the amount of clicks used within their language. There are many variations of the language not only in the Khoisan language, but also within the !Kung as well. Linguists have distinguished between eleven and fifteen dialects. Most of the variations are clustered in geographical areas: Northern, North-Central, Central and Southeastern. The American enunciation of the !Kung would simply be “Kung”, but the exclamation point at the beginning of the word indicates a click. Most non-native and non-scholars leave out the …show more content…
They are one of the earliest hunter-gathering societies to still exist today. Their survival has intrigued anthropologist, particularly their knowledge of which plants can be used for medicine and those that are harmful. The !Kung may have very important information for anthropologist regarding medical advancement. The effort to study and examine the !Kung is being done very carefully. Anthropologist do not want to disturb the culture too much in their efforts to better understand it. Generally, !Kung people are welcoming to outsider observation. They do however have a history of being oppressed by European settlers in South Africa, so there is some, understandable mistrust when an outside group comes to study
It is a Khoisan language; a language known for its use of clicks. The clicking comes from the use of the tongue “clicking” on the think roof of the mouth. The !Kung people are famous for the amount of clicks used within their language. There are many variations of the language not only in the Khoisan language, but also within the !Kung as well. Linguists have distinguished between eleven and fifteen dialects. Most of the variations are clustered in geographical areas: Northern, North-Central, Central and Southeastern. The American enunciation of the !Kung would simply be “Kung”, but the exclamation point at the beginning of the word indicates a click. Most non-native and non-scholars leave out the …show more content…
They are one of the earliest hunter-gathering societies to still exist today. Their survival has intrigued anthropologist, particularly their knowledge of which plants can be used for medicine and those that are harmful. The !Kung may have very important information for anthropologist regarding medical advancement. The effort to study and examine the !Kung is being done very carefully. Anthropologist do not want to disturb the culture too much in their efforts to better understand it. Generally, !Kung people are welcoming to outsider observation. They do however have a history of being oppressed by European settlers in South Africa, so there is some, understandable mistrust when an outside group comes to study