Mostly good [reminds me of stuff I learned to do in Boy Scouts]
- and I'm in agreement with MOST of it, but there's a bit of BS
in there too:
What's wrong with the bottom two paragraphs? I'll say below:
*This basically means that a hypothetical hunter-gatherer or
modern group dropped into a new ecosystem would have to
redevelop an efficient subsistence pattern based on the nuances
of their new environment, but with very little culturally
transmitted knowledge guiding them,* he says.
Indeed, this hypothetical group would first have to work out
what the biggest nutritional resources are in the area, the most
efficient way to hunt or gather them, how to process them
and*most importantly*where they should be prioritizing their
efforts. A hunter-gatherer who had been raised to keenly observe
the natural world and identify animal behaviour would be able to
adapt to this change in ecosystem by employing their already
developed powers of observation, deduction, and intuition in
that process."
WHY would ANYBODY from either OUR time or a hunter-gatherer time
be suddenly DROPPED into a new Ecosystem and have to survive
without culturally transmitted knowledge guiding them?
Just because we don't have written records of the period, does
NOT mean they didn't have oral tradition guiding them.
Did an ALIEN pick up the ancients and drop them in a new
ecosystem?
Did an ALIEN pick up the moderns and drop them in a new
ecosystem?
No. George Dvorsky was the alien who dropped US moderns into a
new hypothetical environment and then said "We wouldn't make it,
but they would".
That's the bit-of-a-stretch that I see.
He does correct for it later on when he goes into storytelling.
Still though, that's not true either that we don't have it; we
have Internet, TV, culture, entertainment; our storytelling
methods have changed and our Family groupings have gotten much
larger than just our parents and siblings and aunts and uncles.
There's a bit of a "Noble Savage" worship in the article but,
overall, it was really a good article and a good reminder to
modern people to "brush up" on some survival skills in your
spare time.
