Who are we? Where do we come from? Who were our ancestors? How are human beings interconnected? So many questions that cross our minds billions of times. To answer many of these questions and analyze the social and cultural behavior of human beings, I tried to delve into this topic of anthropology. I was amazed at how man, as a social animal, has evolved to the level of perfection in many ways. There is an old Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. This week 4 lecture revolves around the idea of ​​how societies thrive to earn decent bread and butter to support themselves and their families. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Not so long ago, we all made our living by forging our necessities directly from nature. Everyone had equal access to everything they needed. Theme 4 focuses primarily on economic anthropology, a type of cultural anthropology that studies economic systems. Economic systems include production (making things), consumption (using things), and exchange (transferring things). The way we produce, consume and exchange is enormously shaped by our surroundings and the environment in which we live. The four modes of subsistence are defined by the tasks involved in obtaining food as well as how members of society are socially organized to accomplish these tasks. We can think of each culture's livelihood system as a set of survival strategies uniquely developed to adapt to a particular environment. Like for example if we look at video 1 of the hunters and gatherers in Alaska, in addition to facing very harsh and extreme climatic conditions, they still prefer to live in their Dena'ina country. Helen living in Lime Village reminds me of my own grandmother who left stone unturned to teach her new generation the ways to survive when environmental and economic conditions are not favorable. The sentence that stood out to me the most in this video and impressed me the most is that "it is the duty of today's parents and grandparents to teach the next generation how to survive." . Because culture shapes how we perceive and interact with the environment, different societies may adapt to similar environments in different ways depending on available resources. For most of our history, humans led a nomadic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers. Around 14,000 years ago, near the beginning of the Neolithic period, humans adopted a more sedentary lifestyle and, over time, transitioned to an entirely agricultural subsistence economy. The transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a reliance on agricultural production is commonly considered one of the most significant achievements in human history. After production and consumption comes the notion of exchange. The concept of exchange is hilariously explained by the excerpts from the big bang theory which beautifully illustrate the concept of reciprocity. In my opinion, exchange is only a source of bringing two individuals or a country together and binding them in a relationship, which can be an obligation. Topic 5 is rather interesting because I never had the time..