The Gods Must Be Crazy

The movie the Gods Must Be Crazy is about cultural diffusion. In the beginning of the movie we are introduced to a tribe that is isolated from everything else. One of the tribe members happens to find an empty glass bottle that apparently fell from a plane, but the tribe member believes that it fell from the sky and that it was a gift from the gods. Excitedly he shows all the other tribe members the gift from the gods but none of them seem to know what it is. So they immediately find various uses for the bottle and it becomes used for everything. They used it to make music, chop food, but they never actually drank out of it. Due to its various uses everyone wanted to use the bottle but there was only one which caused them to have to share. Apparently they weren't very used to sharing which caused arguments over who could use the bottle and they would end up hurting each other. Instantly they blamed the bottle for their fighting and the bottle went from being a gift from the gods to it being a punishment.

The bottle was an example of cultural diffusion because it was spread from the city to an isolated civilization that was not familiar with it. Cultural diffusion has occurred with many thing that we use now a days. For example our alphabet consists of 26 letters just like the Phoenician alphabet. Phoenician words are often found in Greek and Latin classical literatures. Egyptian, Akkadian, Arabic, and Hebrew were also influenced by the Phoenician alphabet. Therefore now and back then cultural diffusion has influenced our lives mainly for the good.