Hi Ed,
At 14:37 03/08/01 -0400, you wrote:
>
(KH in reply to REH)
>> No, Ray. You have it all wrong, I'm afraid. Man only has a balanced
>> relationship with nature when his agression and hunting equipment reached
>> equilibrium with nature by a sort of force majeure. The anthropologist who
>> has studied these matters more than anybody, Binford, has shown that it is
>> only those tribes who have found themselves trapped in secluded
>> environments such as valleys, pensinsulas and rainforest/mountainous
>> fastnesses have learned to live with what they have and not to over-hunt.
>> (And incidentally, learn to be careful not to overbreed and usually
>> practise infanticide.)
(EW)
>Keith, I don't disagree that human expansion played a very prominent role in
>the extermination of large mammals, but I think you oversimplify the
>relationship between people, as hunters and gatherers, and the animals they
>harvested.
I wasn't meaning to oversimplify when I wrote that man's first expansion
into any new environmental niche was characterised by a crude and wholesale
destruction of whatever could be hunted by whatever weapons man happened to
have with him at the time. But after this first phase, the incoming tribe
had to adapt pretty quickly to what was left. Of course, not all large
animals were killed. Much depended on the nature of the animals concerned
and the habitats. Some could escape by speed, some into dense jungle. But,
usually, all fairly placcid large animals (and also large competitive
predators) were wiped out.
But after this, a very sophisticated relationship with the flora and fauna
resulted. Indeed, in many places (e.g. North America, Australia, etc) the
use and knowledge of the atlatl died out because there was no need for it
any longer. In Australia, the aborigines even lost the use of the
bow-and-arrow, the successor to the atlatl, which was more able to kill
smaller, fleeter animals and at greater distances. This "simplification" is
popularly considered a reversion to a more "backward" type of man in those
regions. But, of course, this isn't so. The successive generations had to
learn quite different skills to survive.
(EW)
>During the 1970s, I spent a lot of time at pipeline related hearings in the
>Canadian western Arctic. At these hearings, Dene Indian people would say
>things like "If the pipeline comes, all the animals will go away."
>Initially, my interpretation of this was "there goes breakfast, lunch and
>dinner!", but the more I listened, the more I recognized that something else
>was being said, something much deeper. In various ways that we cannot
>understand, the Dene were expressing their relationship to the animals. The
>demise of the animals would be their own demise. Without the animals there,
>they would no longer be who they were. They would have lost their integrity
>as a people. I recall reading a doctoral dissertation on Yukon Indians that
>made a similar point.
I entirely appreciate that a tribe's post-destructive relationship with his
new niche would then lead on to a deeper relationship with the flora and
fauna around. This is, of course, dependent on there being enough left on
which to eat and develop a relationship. This would have taken several
generations. I'm not trying to disparage the philosophical/poetic myths
(their equivalent of scientific understanding) -- only that these didn't
arise spontaneously, only as result of being forced to adapt and, as a
byproduct, of accumulating observations which were consequently built into
those myths, enabling sensible long-term cropping of the environment to the
benefit of both it and man.
(EW)
>I would point out that the Dene were not trapped "in secluded environments
>such as valleys, pensinsulas and rainforest/ mountainous fastnesses." They
>hunted over very large territories,
Binford wasn't implying that these "trapped" tribes were found only in
confined environments (though many were, and some still are), but in
environments without much contact from outside trade (because they lived in
bleak surroundings) or where population pressures all round them maintained
strong frontiers. These tribes therefore had to adapt to what they happened
to have if they were to survive.
(EW)
>and many had the option of not hunting
>at all but of finding work in the industrial economy. But even those who
>were no longer full time hunters recognized and expressed the ancient
>kinship with the animals and the fear of what would happen if the animals
>left.
>
>It's a very speculative thought, but, since those hearings in the Mackenzie
>Valley, I've sometimes wondered whether the poverty and despair in which
>many North American Indians have found themselves reflects the fact that the
>animals have indeed gone away and the possibility that they have taken
>something very vital with them.
I would be inclined to think that this is truly so. I even think that
modern man is also feeling the same despair because of the disappearance of
community, even though his myths have receded far more into the background
than those, say, of the North American Indian. This lack of community and
the consequent excessive individualism that is imposed on almost everybody
these days is not only dangerous in my view but run counters to deep
instincts within us.
Indeed, one of the main motives of my "hobby" business, Handlo Music (which
doesn't make a profit), is that I believe that community will revive
strongly at some stage in the future. Ironically, although I am not a
Christian, the choral music I sell is predominantly religious and is mainly
bought by church choirs of all denominations in over 50 countries. I am not
at all uncomfortable about this support of church communities. They (and
secular choirs, of course) are just about the only sort of continuous
community for the young and old that's left in the modern world and may
well be the nuclei from which wider and deeper communities develop. This
hope actually gives me more satisfaction than the parallel one of helping
to keep some of the great choral music of the last 400-600 years alive.
Keith Hudson
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
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