Sociologists have studied the hundreds of human cultures and produced a catalog of their features. Trapped within a single social system, people assume that the arbitrary conventions of their society are "natural".....how else could it be? The science of sociology grew up in the excitement of revealing just how diverse the various modes of human social organization can be. However, within all the diversity that is possible between human societies, there are several dozen common features found in all human societies, as first compiled by George P. Murdock]. Many of these "universals" are derived from the common human struggle for survival which leads us all to seek to understand and control our existence.