Video Transcript: Lesson 8

 Unit 05 01 MesoAmerica and Peru 

Hello, welcome today. This is the sixth session of the Christian leaders Institute World History 101 course, we started at the beginnings of civilization. And this course runs until the year 1500 ad, more or less, my name is Rich hamstra. And I'm very pleased to be your instructor for this course. In this six session, we're going to move continents even move hemispheres. Previously, we looked at Mesopotamia, India, China, Egypt. So we've been in Asia and North Africa. Now today, we're going to move to the Americas, primarily South America with Peru, and early mezzo America. And then we'll conclude this session with a summary of part one. And today's class concludes the first three parts of this course. Early Peru nobody knows exactly when humans came to the Americas North and South America. For many, many generations, it was thought maybe around the year, 10,000 12,000 years before Christ, when the Ice Age, opened up some valleys and passageways. People came from Manchuria and Korea, that area, Russia came across the Bering Strait, and through Alaska and Canada, started from the north and move south. And that Southern movement seemed to have happened very rapidly. So that people are down in the bottom of South America. You know, maybe around the year 10,000 BC or so, today, if those dates have been pushed back considerably, so that North America is thought to have people human beings living in it, maybe 30,000 years ago, there's even one estimate 60,000 years ago, that seems like quite a bit. But let's just say even 30,000 years ago that humans were living here, and also through genetic research, among other things. It's been established that the Polynesians from Indonesia, and those islands did sail east and came to the South American continent, most likely around Mesoamerica, and maybe around Bolivia, and into Peru. And so there is colonization, both from the North. Folks from Russia and Korea, Asians, as well as Asians who came on boats, and came from Polynesia into more of the Southern Americas. That is very much a developing story. We don't know exactly, for sure. But it is the case that there were hunter and gatherer groups, who were in the Americas for many, many, many generations, prior to the establishing of what we might call the early civilizations. We're going to start with to today. And unfortunately, in this course, we will only have brief notice of the civilizations or cultures that were in North America. We're going to start in South America, in the coastal Atlantic, or I'm sorry, Pacific coast of Peru and Bolivia and Chile, in early civilizations there and then later into Mesoamerica. Peru is was early colonizing early folks were there we think maybe farming and living in the Andes Mountains and along the coastal range, very distinct environments. The steps, the mountains, and the coast, probably around the year 10,000 BC, somewhere in there at 500 BC that we have evidence of that. But they began to be centralized in a culture known as the North, the northern people, and later in folks called the Shavon culture. We'll come to that in a moment. Here are your reading assignments about early Peru. There are two of them basically. The first one is a Wikipedia article. And that just really talks about the pre Columbian cultures i for this session, you only need to read as far as the Inca Empire. Many of us have heard of the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Incas. Those are the three big empires that we know about. Today, actually, we're going to be talking about the cultures that preceded them. So this Javan culture was early, prior to the Incas in Peru. And later, we'll talk about the old culture that precedes the Mayan and Aztec in Mesoamerica. So please read these two articles, and they will be included as material for the quizzes.

So we're talking about the road, we're talking about the pre Inca cultures that developed there. Even before the year 3500 BC, groups began to settle in the river valleys about 200, actually kilometers that miles north of current De Lima, Peru. And they began early on to use the terrorists Farming Method up in the Andes, in the mountains. Terrorists farming is when you have a flat level, and then you have a vertical level. And then another flat level is like steps, basically, and you farmed the area. And then that way you can, you can have flatland on which to farm in mountainous regions. They also were very early, they figured out how to use water. That is a common theme through all the early civilizations, how to manage water is one of the if not the most critical element of forming an early South settlement. And so irrigation, and their ability to control the floodwaters of the various rivers is extremely important. One of the earliest cities in Peru is a place called corral, established sometime around 2500 BC, by the North of Chico people. They were builders of large buildings, probably temples or storage houses. Remember in the ancient world at Temple is also where you store your valuable possessions. And in these cultures, silver is extremely valued, as well as gold. And there seemed to be quite a bit of that in the Andes mountains that they mined and refined. They did all their building, as well as in whether it's South America or in Mesoamerica. Without the wheel. The Americas did not know about the wheel, they knew about the circle. But they did not know about the wheel until the Europeans arrived. Much much later with Christopher Columbus. It's really quite amazing. Therefore the sort of monumental structures that they were able to build and huge statuary that they were able to build and they had to move these things without putting them on wheels without rolling them along. It's just quite astounding how they were able to do that. The normal Chico people constructed pyramids, and temples and and they held their religious rites within these places. This is a example of a very, very early archaeological remains, all we see is really the foundation, the base of this round structure. A pyramid would have been built probably on top of this, and the people observe the priests going and often the priests or the shaman would conduct their religious rites in these places. Will a part of the Gordo Chico larger group is a smaller group called excuse me call this shirvan culture. And it seemed to come to flourish to flourish around the year 900 BC. very notable this avant culture for its extensive temple complexes, huge monumental buildings in the mountains. They also had significant influence all the way down to the coastline. And so this avanzar remembered as sort of that first culture to unite the different geographical regions that are found in Peru from the Pacific coast. Through this through the flatter lands up into the mountains. They were artists and developed a very fine culture of art and creative expression. They were among those who helped to domesticate the llama and other native animals to the to the Andes and they did use the llamas, they didn't have horses. Again horses are not known in North America until the Europeans arrived. At least not among humans and the Peruvians use the llama as they're beasts of burden, putting packs on there helping to carry stones and crops and and the like. As well as of course harvesting the wool from llama. And they were the Shivang are known for very, very fine textiles, woven from the alpaca and the llama.

The Chava are different from the previous cultures in that they extended a trade influence over much of South America into including the Amazon regions of Brazil and north into Colombia, Venezuela, they, they were able to unite South America in a significant way, by these by these trade routes. And they spread their culture and their religion, far and wide. So prior to the Incas coming to Shivam, and this rod are very influential for all the cultural developments in particular, that comes afterwards, in distinction from some of the other cultures that we looked at China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, were military issues are very significant, and military leaders are often the lead the political leaders as well. Thus far there have been no military sites or military remains found. The Shavon culture is not based on warfare, as far as we know, that based much more on trade. Again, here's just a map of the chevron culture and civilization its influence. It is very much centered here. Its primary place here, which we'll talk about in a minute. This is a this is a picture of the central religious area of the shirvan. And you'll see here that it is not much remains, but you just get a glimpse of how monumental, how huge These structures were, one temple enclosed more than an acre of land. That's incredible enclosure, you'd think of it as the same amount as a very, very large modern, in the, in the Western world, at least modern stores that cover about an acre of land. And the religion of course, very much drove the Savant culture as well as trade. This is an example of shirvan art. You'll see here, the serious looking figure, is this a bowl of some kind? Is it a dragon of some kind? They is highly stylized, and you'll find these kinds of symbols throughout the chevron culture. Chevron religion, as far as we can tell, is similar to other agricultural religions remember an agricultural society? The question is always fertility. Will our crops grow? Will our animals reproduce and will our families reproduce? The Shivam different from other places have a chief god T one, two Tiwanaku. Who combined, it is a sec asexual that means it doesn't reflect either male or female, but seems to have been a reflection of both. Combining the male and female principles that go into, of course, reproduction. Well, to Watercool received the sacrifices of the people and through the intercession of the shaman and the shaman to practice their their religion, often under the influence of loosen the toric. Drugs we suspect, Coco, mushrooms and alike, as well as most likely practice some form of human sacrifice. Although again, so much we don't know about the Avon culture, the archaeology and study of the history of the Peruvian cultures, especially before the Incas is really a relatively recent, I would say within the last 3040 years. And in terms of study and archaeology, that's not a very long history. We're just beginning to understand who these people were and what their culture look like. So we have to be very cautious about any claims that we make. That says yes, definitely they did this or definitely they did not do that. But it seems as if human sacrifice was likely a part of their religion.

Tiwanaku is one who is often pictured in monumental statues, as holding to staff, you'll soon see a picture of this God and the arms or has folded like this or to, to staff. Actually, the stabs are constructed with seashells, which represent the union of the male and female, into, into one. And with this unity, of course, comes the sharing of fertility for one's crops. Here's the image Tiwanaku. You'll see here in its arms. The two shells to bear we don't have an image that full on but was unable to find one. The Shavon also worshipped the Jaguar many, many images of the jaguar in in archaeological remains. And it's clear that the Jaguar had religious meaning. This was true not just among the Shivam, but also we'll see later in the Mesoamerican peoples. But the Jaguar has mysterious, magical, sacred powers. Among the shirvan, the Jaguar had the ability to shift shape, from its animal form to its human form, and back from its human form into its animal form. There are passageways through which the shamans would travel and some even through it's probably just the worshipers would travel in which there are reliefs of the Jaguars shifting its shape from its feline form to its human form. And back again, our imaginations have to sort of fill in what religious purpose this served. But I get as was mentioned early on in this course. Religion is often expressions of how we human beings tried to figure out how to make sense how to make order out of what is beyond us to control, weather environment, other factors. It is our religion is a way for us to try to get a handle on the mysterious or the mystic. And the Jaguar shifting from one shape to another probably fits into this sort of thinking. Here, the Jaguar has these as these abilities to appear in many forms. And of course, a jaguar is a is a knight Hunter, for the most part. And so one can easily understand how it becomes extremely important totem animal throughout Latin, what we today call Latin America. This is a vessel that has a Jaguar shape or a feline shape on it. And it is part of the shirvan It's as Javan artifacts, we're gonna move down over to Mesoamerica. And by Mesoamerica, we mean really the Yucatan peninsula of what is today southern Mexico, but also wanting to think a little bit more broadly down into Central America itself. Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, those countries, as well as up north a little bit into southern Mexico. Here's your reading assignment. Again, two articles on mesial. America one dealing much more with religion, and one dealing with the people that come from this area where they're from and who came before them. When we talk about Mesoamerica and we talked about the early development of cultures, we really our focus will focus on this Yucatan area of the peninsula that you see here. This is the Yucatan Peninsula, with the Gulf of Mexico coming through here,

this area. Tech Empire is partnering North into Mexico, but also will include this. After Columbus and the coming of the Europeans and the establish, of Spanish colonialism, this area is extraordinarily significant for

ports where the Spanish would dock and where they would load their bounty that they took from Latin America. So this Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico is where we're focused for the Olmec civilization. Basically, the Olmec civilization lasted about 800 years, which is a significant amount of time from 1200 to 400 years before Christ. We point to it in specific because they established some settled agriculture. Instead of the slash and burn, which was often used in those tropical lands, they were able to plant the same fields year after year after year. And they did this by the land is very swampy around where the rivers come through, they filled in areas built dikes built build walls, filled in the areas with soil, and then planted and so their crops were actually raised up above the swampy areas. And this is quite a technological accomplishment again, and one marvels at the amount of labor and sweat, blood and tears, no doubt that went into creating these, these terraces, above the swamp. But they were experts at this, and they really became the foundation of their settled culture. Their main cities seems like, again, the early on crowded cities, and the cities were primarily places of worship, from what we can tell cultural locations. Some archaeologists wonder whether or not they're even people actually even lived in these places. Or if they just went there for their religious ceremonies. That's, again debated. But San Lorenzo is a very important one. And then, later levanta. It's pretty interesting that most of the time when there's a city, and then it gets abandoned, and they move to people move somewhere else. The abandonment is caused by famine, or drought, or plague, or most often, is conquered by another group. It's very mysterious to us why the Olmecs left friends in San Lorenzo, that had been the religious center for many hundreds of years, and built a new one in levanta. And they seem to have done this three or four times throughout their culture. They would abandon build a place monumental buildings, places of worship temples, and be there for some generations. And then suddenly, they would stop and they would build a new place, sometimes are very far away, and that would become their center of worship. We don't know why they did this. Our curiosity is greatly aroused. But it does seem to have happened and it did not happen because of warfare. They weren't conquered by some other group. The two cultures in the Americas, Peru and Mesoamerica. Probably prior to the Inca, prior to the Mayan and prior to the Aztec, are quite notable in that they, they were not war, fair and warrior led cultures that's in distinction from virtually everywhere else in the world that we know of. They were agriculturally based. But they did not add and very influential, culturally very influential with trade. But they did not dominate did not create military empires, like we saw with the Egyptians or the Assyrians or the Chinese. Quite a different understanding the Olmec civilization, the culture that they produce, particularly the art and the religion, and the calendar systems that they produce, is that central cultural influence throughout Mesoamerica for the next 1500 years, until the coming of Columbus, it's really Olmec culture and how that gets developed by the Mayans. That is that we witness so their influence was extensive and lasted a long time. This map shows sort of the central cities of the Olmecs Culture San Lorenzo here levanta here. And they you can see that they are based on rivers. But these rivers are very

compared to the Yellow River or the Indus River or the Nile River, small rivers. And again, the fundamental thing is not so much the river system, as it is the swamp land that they reclaimed and use. So you see, this is the the center of their homeland. And as I mentioned, it's unclear whether or not the cities were inhabited, and, or whether they were just used occasionally, as religious sites. The hallmark Omaxe built, as we saw, in so many places, pyramid structures, for their temples, and again, this is part of the religion, where fertility is the key issue, one reaches into the sky, from the sky comes to rain in the sky is the sun, one reaches up into the sky in order to touch the gods. We find this as a common motif through religions of throughout the world. Above, heaven is up, we think about. Now, it's also the case that some of these cultures went underground as well, in order to touch the spirits that are important for raising up the soil, and the light. So their temples are pyramid structures. And we'll talk a little bit more about Olmec religion in a moment. But one of the things that they are really known for is the creation of these giant stone heads. By giant some of the heads are nine feet tall. So quite a bit taller than most ceilings and most houses in the Western world. giant heads and not the bodies, just the heads and they are very carefully carved. And they seem to be all different. So that it isn't just like a representation of a God that is repeated over and over. Judgment of historians is that they they were carved in honor of certain rulers, or very interesting feature of Mesoamerican culture that the Mayans and the Aztecs certainly show us and we think the Olmecs knew how important the ball games were. And we don't know much about these ball games. They were maybe a little bit like Norcross are a little bit like hockey. We think that they use sticks and round balls or things that they would hit and try and get through goals. But there are indications in in the buildings, stadiums or places where they were the Olmecs would hold these important ballgames, athletics and sports in many cultures. Our outlets are sublimation. They're their alternate ways to handle aggression. And isn't it interesting that they develop these in this culture in particular, that's not known as being a warring culture that has all this competition. All this release. As a social worker friends, a friend of mine was say, she would say, the release of all that testosterone one way or another, and they do that through the sports. So are these giant heads in honor of rulers, some suspect maybe a famous ballplayers? This is an example of one of the Olmec temples. I think there's probably may well be that this is somewhat reconstructed. I'm not certain in this picture. But you can see that the priest of course, would walk up to the top up at the top is where the sacrifices are made. Again, in the Olmec culture, as was shirvan most likely human cultures or human sacrifices. The human sacrifice is a very common motif. You find it in various ways. Probably a Blooding sacrifice here among in America and in Peru. Certainly in Mesopotamia. People would be offered children would be offered we hear that in the Old Testament, with some regularity. In Egypt, there would be burial of slaves and sometimes even family members. When a ruler would die, you would you would bury

alive. People who had served them in Earth in this life so that they can serve them in the next. In China, there is some evidence in some of the dynasties, at least, that when a emperor would die, or the king would die, then again family members. And one dynasty in particular, the the wife of the emperor was expected to be buried along with her husband. It was a good, good life while you were alive, but once he died, your life would be forfeit as well. So the offering of human life to the gods, or to provide for a wonderful afterlife is witnessed over and over and over, in so many of these ancient cultures. This is one of the images of an Olmec giant had, as I mentioned, we don't know if this is a ruler, or if this is perhaps a ballplayer or some other famous person. It is this is this person have stylized hair, or is that a helmet of some kind. As our today, hockey players or football players might wear, you can imagine historians and archaeologists and artists have a lot of fun debating such matters. This is an all metal mask, and it's ceramic, I believe, they were very skilled, the Olmecs and their artistic expression. Not clear when one would wear such a mask, obviously, this is not a reflective of a light, mood, happy mood, this person seems angry, threatening. But it is it is one of the architecture artifacts left from the Olmec culture. And you can see that it's very realistic, the Egyptians became highly stylized as so that the human form is represented in near perfect in ways that no human being could ever express. This looks like a face that of someone who we can meet. And therefore it's much more realistic.

As with many cultures, we by the way, with respect to the Shivam, I don't think there's evidence of writing. There is some evidence of record keeping, but we'll talk about that a little bit more with the Incas where the evidence is more clear. Here, the Olmecs maybe have a system of writing. That's unclear and different scholars will give you a different answer on that. But I think all would agree that they do have a highly developed calendar. And this This is just a sketch off of one of the one of the rock formations one of the creations made by the Olmecs. That probably is a calendar. In Mesoamerica, the calendars are extraordinarily important to the people and very carefully kept. This is a province of the priests, in particular, and very much a part of the religion. And I say Mesoamerican calendars, because these are not specifically olmak nor Mayan nor Aztec, but seem to. To cover many of the cultures that came out of Central America and Mexico is different there is more than one calendar that gets expressed there is it there's a seasonal calendar, which helps farmers know when to plant and harvest their crops. For the Farmers Almanac, calendar, and it seems to be based on about a year over 260, which may be the the productive year for crops in that area. Then there's other calendars that go from festival to festival to festival. And they keep track of what the people are supposed to come to worship and what kind of sacrifices they're supposed to bring and that sort of thing. And there's a third kind of calendar that is based on the rotation of the Earth around the Sun or back in the old days, they thought the sun moved around the Earth. So the solar calendar. And of course under the Mayans, as we know that becomes extraordinarily accurate, nearly as accurate as today's atomic clocks. So mathematically and the observation of the sun and the moon and the stars and the rotations. They were they were fantastic. They were experts. One can only imagine how many generations And so observations it takes to become that accurate in understanding time. So it's not clear how much written language the Olmec has. But it is clear that they were experts, and perhaps were the ones who got the calendar system going. Now with respect to Olmec, religion, it is you thought that we have much evidence about how exactly the omics practice and so we, we look at it later cultures and how they developed and sort of reasoned backwards. Now, that's always scary to do. From a historical perspective, it's not the best historical method by any means. But it is, at this point, the best that we have. And so we're doing a lot of piecing and a lot of guessing. But again, remember that culturally, the Olmecs set the standard for Mesoamerica. So their influence lasted throughout many other generations. With all agricultural and early civilizations, unfortunate forces of nature are considered to be governed by the various gods or deities, and that humans need to please these deities with all sorts of rituals and sacrifices, and, as mentioned, lack likely that include even human sacrifices. The role of the priests or the shaman is to meditate mediate between the human and the divine levels. And this is a cultural development in every religion, and every culture that we've talked about so far, China, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Peru, Mesoamerica. In all of those places, there are the holy people, not necessarily men, mostly, but not necessarily, who are the mediators between the human and divine, they, they tell the humans what it is that gods want, or need, or what to do to make the gods happy. And they are the ones who speak for the human beings to the gods and

present their gifts. In honor culture, we think, for the most part that the gods appear, either in animal or human forms with the dragon, often pictured as a feathered serpent, and the Jaguar, probably the two most important totem animals in symbols that we see through Mesoamerica. And actually, they are combinations of a number of forms. In the Chavon culture, remember, the Jaguars seem to have the ability to shape shift from a feline form to the human form and back again, I don't believe that in the Olmec culture, we see that kind of shape shifting. This is an image one of the many images of a feathered serpent. So you see the head of the snake here, and the feathers that are on the body here, it's appears to me to be poised to strike. This is another image of the Feathered Serpent looks a little bit more like a dragon. As we Westerners think about it, and as Chinese picture the dragon, very threatening, head here, open, ready to swallow. Here's its body coming around. And within the body, you see a human form, probably presenting some kind of offering. This may well be the priest. And it could be that the dragon is perceived as surrounding the world in which humans live and governing the world. The feathered serpent is a very important early religious symbol that gets passed on through the Mayans and Aztecs, and even to some extent up into North American culture.

Here's a picture from the Olmecs about Jaguar, sitting on his haunches. Cats are extraordinarily flexible in their ways. The Jaguar here, the mouth is open, but my sense is that it's a more friendly mouth not gaping to

devour people, but almost smiling and perhaps welcoming. Those are how I reading these images. You of course, are welcome to your own interpretation. So we've looked at Peru early Peru Pre Inca, and highlighted the shaman. And we looked at Mesoamerica. Today, highlighting particularly the Olmecs, who precede the Mayans, and the Aztecs in that region of the world. Now we'll end our consideration early Peru and early Mesoamerica. And with that, we and we come to an end of part one of this course on early civilizations. And I would like to just spend a brief moment to do a little bit of review, to help you remember things that we've covered. We started with Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, the Fertile Crescent area, we looked at the cultures, in particular sumar, and early Babylon and Assyria, that brought us down to about the year 600. BC seen when we, when we leave a Syria, they are the rulers of really all of the Middle East, including Egypt, and they are at their height, don't worry, they soon will fall, we looked at India and looked at the verdict culture as it came in and took over the Harappan culture, the Dravidian culture, and there in India established itself and became the founding culture out of which Hinduism and then later, Buddhism and Jainism develops. And that really is a culture that will dominate India for about 1000 years. We looked at China and early China notice the rise of the early dynasties around the Yellow River, and how they sometimes were centralized, but often decentralized, and how different dynasties would take over. And toward the later part of the some of these early dynasties, how important the notion of the mandate from Heaven was, the Emperor ruled for the good of the people, this is what happened wanted of them. And when, when they when the Emperor's would lose that divine mandate, it became the reason for other dynasties to come in and take over, usually by warfare. We looked at ancient Egypt from about 3000, BC to 600, when these series take them over. And we saw their important intermediate times. They're primarily three kingdoms, the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. And now in this session, we looked at Peru with Shivas meso. America with the Olmecs. So we've looked at a dozen or so different cultures already and mentioned a number along the way. Again, I sure we've only just touched the surface of how humans were becoming settled. But it is quite astounding that right around the year 3500, give or take 1000 years almost all around the globe, things changed. Cultures and civilization changed, people changed from wanderers to settle, and how is significant that is in the development of life as we know it today. That settled us is really what we call civilization. And let me just highlight again, a couple of characteristics that we see in virtually every one of these early civilizations. These came up early on in the course, but let me just repeat them. In order for there to be a settled culture, there must be sustainable agriculture, you have to be able to grow crops, and almost always have domesticated animals that will last from one year to the next to the next. And sustainable agriculture in virtually every place is really about water and water management, can they irrigate? Can they stop the floods do they know how to use the rising and lowering of rivers? If they can do that, they can manage the land, you can have sustainable agriculture and sure enough people form together.

What as that happens, there is always a diversification among the social and economic roles that go on there become the farmer class, often the middle class or the merchant class, the go betweens, there are the upper classes often made up of the warriors. And then out of that comes virtually always kings, and also the priestly class. And it's really only the priestly group that in most places has access and ability to use the higher powers of writing or calendar keeping in virtually every time that their civilization gets started, you see new technologies being employed. irrigation, as I mentioned, is a tremendously significant one. In many cultures, the development of bronze when it goes from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age thing changes. Also, in many cultures, that's when gold and silver becomes important. That is a very important, particularly among the Shivam, for instance, gold and silver, coming out of the Andes mountains was an extremely important part of their culture. And in almost virtually every culture, as soon as you get the sense of subtleness, you also have a sense of ownership. This jug of wine belongs to me, this bushel of grain belongs to me, and how do I demonstrate that that's mine, record keeping calendar keeping taxation, all comes with that. And with that, you have to have some way of writing it down, you can't just rely on memory. More most of what we call writing develops out of this need to record keep to say, this belongs to x, this belongs to y, this belongs to Z. And it starts with putting stamps on it. Yep, that's my seal. That's my stamp. And out of that, wishes back develop almost all written languages, these things, generally, we can observe that they always come together to form the basic, the basics of what we call a civilization. So we've looked at section one of this course. This is the first course of two. And this is the first section, of course, one. Basically, we've tried to cover the years, give or take between 3500 BC and 500 BC, along a couple of different cultures. Section two is in development. And hopefully what we'll be able to cover there is around the year five, we'll pick it up at around the year 500 BC, in the same cultures, and try to get as far as 580. That's another 1000 years. And of course, the closer we come to our day and age, the more evidence there is. Therefore the more there is to say, so we'll have to we'll have to go even faster and lighter. over much of that. And yeah, and I hope to be able, with you too, to catch a glimpse of how our human life develops in section two. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time and your attention. And I look forward to seeing you again soon.