Hello Wally:
Yes, been some time since we talked to each other. I can't forget the many
useful things and concepts you taught me.
Well, as for predictability, you might want to read the following piece.
Rather long, but very true.
...........................................................................
Of all the earth's regions, the Eskimo live in the harshest and most
forbidding. Summers are short, cool, and mosquito-plagued; winters long,
dark, and cold. Yet despite the murderous climate and ever-present threat
of famine, the Eskimo are gay, gregarious, good-natured, and amazingly
contented. Innuit, the people, that is what the Eskimo proudly call
themselves. Men, pre-eminent, the Original Men to whom earth herself gave
birth.
Eskimo society in the past was one of equals. They acknowledged neither
chiefs nor superiors; their language lacks the terms. The closest they can
come is to call a man "ishumata" - he who thinks, a man whom others
respect for his wisdom. But power he had none. What power there was lay
within the community, in the rule of public opinion. The approval and
esteem of other members of his group were a man's highest reward,
ostracism his worst punishment.
The advent of the white culture destroyed the fragile fabric of this
ancient way of life. Its concepts of master and servant, of material
wealth as a measure of a person's worth, subordinated one individual's
wishes to another's will and thus were alien and mystifying to the Eskimo
mind. And as the Eskimo settled in permanent communities and adopted the
white culture, they lost touch with the cycle of the seasons. Their
children no longer learn the lore of hunting and the ice and even
sometimes do not learn their grandparents' language. In some smaller
communities, however, the the hunting-trapping life of the camps persists
according to the immutable rules of old: to take from each season what
each season brings; to share your food with all the members of the group,
as they will share theirs with you; to rise to superhuman efforts when the
hunt requires it, and to live in quiet harmony with yourself and others
when bad weather imprisons you in your tent; to do as you like and let
others do as they like.
One of the last and largest camp areas in Canada is Bathhurst Inlet in the
Central Arctic, inhabited by fewer than 90 people living in widely
scattered camps. In winter they hunt seal at the breathing holes and fish
through the ice. In spring, the caribou come from the taiga in the south
across the vastness of the tundra to the Arctic shores. In summer, the men
fish. In fall, the seals are fat and float when shot, the new clove-brown
fur of the caribou is short and strong, ideal for winter clothes, and the
animals are heavy after pasturing all summer on the Arctic meadows. Fat
char ascend the rivers, and ground squirrels, ready for their eight-month
winter sleep, look like plump, furred sausages with feet. It is the time
to collect meat and fish for the dark, lean months of winter ahead.
Camp life is hard. It is an unpredictable life. One year spring comes, but
the caribou do not. The people travel far, work hard, and find nothing.
They may have to trap ground squirrels to subsist. The dogs become weak;
travelling is curtailed. Another year, large numbers of caribou stay near
the camps all year, seals are plentiful, life is relatively easy. To
endure and succeed in such a life, a hunter must be resourceful and hardy,
he must have faith in himself, a lot of optimism, a certain fatalism, and
the ability to live each day and enjoy the good it brings and not spoil it
with worry about the morrow. In the words of an Eskimo song:
And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing:
To live;
To see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.
..........................................................................
Regards,
JC
PS. To all:
Being the fifth one, this is my last post today, unless the rules about
the quota changes, but I don't think they will.
So, today is Mardi Gras, the end of Carnival. It's a holiday for us, maybe
not for you in America.
You may want to turn up your noses to me, but I am a Latinist, a very
insipient one, but I love it.
You know that Carnival actually comes from "Carne Vale", which means "Good
bye meat". For those of you who are Christians, how do you conciliate this
period of no meat (Lent) with the Paleo model? I think fish and eggs are
allowed, though.
Talk to you tomorrow.
JC
On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:59:45 -0700, Wally Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Hello Jose Carlos. Been awhile since I chatted with you.
>
>I have been reading quite a bit of research by John K. Williams, an
>Archeologist who is a field researcher (he actually participates in digs).
>Although he agrees - for the most part - with general paleo dietary
advice;
>he does take issue with some of the concepts associated with that dietary
>advice. For instance (a post by him from another list):
>
>" The whole concept of hunter-gatherers being "intermittent and
>unpatterned" is certainly not substantiated in the archaeological record.
>Our success as a species (H. sapiens) was due partly because we developed
>logistical subsistence strategies, not opportunistic. In other words, we
>obsessively planned everything, from the movement of the band to coincide
>with migrational animals, to the time of day that was allocated to hunting
>and/or gathering. "
>
>" It wasn't as if people just shambled around until they tripped over an
>antelope. The Paleolithic folks who lived an unpatterned life were
>Darwinian zeros. "
>
>John suggests that unless an individual lived in a climate where he/she
>could literally wake up in the morning and start eating food that was
>simply "lying around", there most certainly would have been a considerable
>amount of predictability in life. It would have been a survival tool. He
>likes to say that it's not just our big brains, but our *obsessiveness*
>that secures our survival.
>
>Food for thought.
>=========================================================================
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