Safety Nets



Today, a few billion humans live in affluence.  Their unsustainable societies have social safety nets made possible by nonrenewable energy.  When they are disrupted by hurricanes, earthquakes, or famine, food relief is usually shipped in from other regions, preventing mass starvation.  For most of the human saga, each clan or community was on its own, far less likely to be rescued by outsiders.

The San people have the oldest DNA of any living culture.  Their DNA is the genetic foundation of nearly all modern humans.  Until recent decades, they had a sustainable safety net, but herders, farmers, and others have pushed them off most of their traditional territory.  The San now inhabit the Kalahari Desert.  On average, two of every five years are drought years, and severe droughts occur one in every four years. 

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lot of time with the San.  She wrote her first book about them in 1958, and her third book in 2006.  Like any intelligent culture, their safety net included careful family planning, to avoid the suffering caused by overpopulation, and its trusty companions: environmental degradation, hunger, and conflict.

Because of low body fat and hard work, San women began menstruating later.  Some did not have monthly periods.  Children were usually nursed for about four years, which further reduced mom’s fertility.  Most of the women had one to four offspring.  Nomads moved frequently, and belongings and infants had to be hauled long distances.  A woman could only carry one infant, so just one twin was kept.

When a child could not be kept, the woman gave birth alone, away from the camp, and buried the newborn before it drew breath.  In their culture, a newborn did not immediately become alive, so disposing it was OK.  Crippled or badly deformed infants were not kept, because they would be a drain on the wellbeing of the band.  To avoid unwanted pregnancies in harsh times, it was common for folks to abstain from intercourse. 

Richard Lee wrote about the San.  Their primary food was mongongo nuts, which dropped once a year, but could be gathered all year long.  Their secondary food was meat.  The Kalahari provided them with about 100 edible plant species, which they were careful not to overuse.  The San expected periodic times of scarcity, so they reserved some plant species for drought food.  Portions of their territory were set aside for lean times.

John Reader wrote about an extreme drought in Botswana that lasted three years, resulting in the deaths of 250,000 cattle and 180,000 people.  The San didn’t starve.  Each week they spent 12 to 19 hours foraging for their sustenance.  They knew how to live.

The outlook for our highly unsustainable society is daunting.  It depends on a stable climate, and ever-diminishing energy resources.  Our safety net is something like a time bomb — tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

The San thrived by carefully adapting to their wild ecosystem.  Consumers thrive by eliminating wild ecosystems and replacing them with forest mines, soil mines, mineral mines, permanent settlements, and complex industrial systems.  Our way of life cannot survive a three year disconnect from fossil energy, or three years of abnormal weather.

In the far north, the Eskimos also had safety nets.  The super-frigid arctic was an immensely challenging habitat for hairless tropical primates.  Beyond seasonal eggs and berries, little foraging was possible.  Meat was the primary food, and hunting was never reliable.

Storing meat or eggs in a treeless land inhabited by hungry polar bears and wolves was not easy.  Their food preservation methods would gag suburban consumers.  In Greenland, Knud Rasmussen got salmonella after eating kivioq, a yummy delicacy made from dead auks sewn inside a seal gut and left to rot for two months.  This was before antibiotics.  He died.  

Life was hard.  Knud told the story of a man named Qumangâpik, who had four wives and 15 children.  The first wife froze to death, the second was buried by an avalanche, the third died of illness, and the fourth froze to death.  Of his 15 children, one starved, four were frozen, and five died of illness.  Qumangâpik froze to death, along with his wife and two little children.

Knud’s buddy, Peter Freuchen, went to Greenland in 1906, built a trading post, married a native woman, and wrote about wild Eskimos — before their traditional lifestyle had been destabilized by disease, guns, booze, bureaucrats, and missionaries.  In the 1920s, during a severe storm, his sled dogs refused to continue.  So he crawled under the sled and took a nap.  When he awoke, his left leg was frozen solid.  It thawed, rotted, and had to be amputated.

In the arctic, safety nets had to rely far more on population management.  Survival depended on the lads who brought the meat home.  Without hunters, everyone starved.  Second in importance was their wives, who could bear more children once the lean times had passed.  Least important were the elderly and children, especially female youngsters, who would not grow up to be hunters.  There were times when starving mothers strangled and ate their own children.

When hunting was bad, suicide was common.  Elders would take one-way walks into the frigid night.  Old women sometimes asked a son or daughter to stab them in the heart with a dagger.  Old men sometimes asked a son to hang them.  At the conclusion of a joyful farewell party, father and son would rub noses, and then dad would be hoisted up, to begin his journey to the other side, where game was always abundant. 

“There is absolutely no cruelty connected with this,” Freuchen emphasized.  “Fear of death is unknown among them, they know only love of life… they believe themselves to be the happiest people on earth living in the most beautiful country there is.”  There was no shame in eating the dead, or killing and eating children and dogs.  Survival required it.  It was OK.

Vilhelm Moberg described family planning in heathen Sweden.  When a child was born, the father decided its fate.  If he allowed it to live, it was sprinkled with water and given a name.  Sickly and deformed infants were exposed (abandoned outdoors).  In times of famine, even healthy newborns were exposed, especially girls.  The old and infirm were dispatched by pushing them off the ancestral cliff (ättestup) or by clobbering them with the ancestral club (ätteklubbor).

Anyway, contact with civilization has now succeeded in eliminating most sustainable cultures.  Infectious diseases have hammered wild people everywhere.  Outsiders introduced the San to dogs and horses, which made overhunting far easier.  They now live in permanent villages where alcoholism, individualism, and violence are common.  Their traditional way of life is essentially over.

Initially, Freuchen and Rasmussen were proud of their efforts to help the Eskimos enjoy the wonders of modernity.  Guns made it far easier to hunt (and overhunt).  Guns made so much noise that they scared caribou away — they abandoned their normal migration routes, and entire communities starved.  Loud gunfire scared seals away.  Seals shot with guns often sank, and were lost.  By 1908, Rasmussen had profound regrets.  The Eskimos appeared to be on the path to extinction.

Gretel Ehrlich visited Greenland several times between 1993 and 1999.  Unlike the Kalahari, Greenland had valuable resources to attract greed freaks — cod, seals, walrus, birds, minerals, and so on.  Natives became addicted to the money economy, and now enjoy year round access to edible food-like substances imported from elsewhere, fueling population growth.  By killing extra fish and wildlife, they earn the money needed for TVs, electricity, telephones, cigarettes, booze, snowmobiles, motorboats, guns, ammo…  Many were hunting and fishing as if they were the last generation.

Please note that the sustainable wild cultures mentioned above would perceive our obsession with perpetual growth, our insatiable hunger for status trinkets, and our weirdness about abortion to be absolutely insane.  An Eskimo gent once told a white foreigner, “Alas, you are a child in your thoughts.”  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

Image: “Greenland Storyteller,” from Rasmussen’s book.

Ehrlich, Gretel, This Cold Heaven — Seven Seasons in Greenland, Pantheon Books, New York, 2001.

Freuchen, Peter, Book of the Eskimos, World Publishing Company, Cleveland, 1961.

Freuchen, Peter, Arctic Adventure — My Life in the Frozen North, 1935, Reprint. The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2002.

Lee, Richard B., The Dobe !Kung, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1984.

Moberg, Vilhelm, A History of the Swedish People, Pantheon Books, New York, 1970.

Rasmussen, Knud, The People of the Polar North, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, 1908.

Reader, John, Man on Earth, Perennial Library, New York, 1990.

Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, The Harmless People, Vintage Books, New York, 1989.  Second edition. 

Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, The Old Way — A Story of the First People, Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 2006.

Extra credit homework:

Bastardy and Baby Farming in Victorian England by Dorothy L. Haller

Across Arctic America

One hundred years ago, the expansion of the white world into the Arctic was disrupting the traditional culture of the Eskimo people.  Into the far north came guns, traders, missionaries, educators, gold miners, and industrial hunting and fishing.  Also, the diseases of civilization slammed the wild people who had no resistance to them.  Eskimos seemed to be getting close to extinction. 

Knud Rasmussen organized a scientific expedition to learn more about the Eskimos before they disappeared forever.  From 1921 to 1924, they traveled by dogsled from Greenland to Siberia, covering about 20,000 miles (32,000 km).  Rasmussen was born in Greenland, and Kalaallisut was the first language he learned.  He was surprised to discover that the Eskimos of Alaska spoke a similar dialect, and told similar stories, despite many centuries with no contact. 

Rasmussen was not an arrogant bigot.  He respected the natives, while also imagining that modern science, religion, and technology was better.  At every opportunity, he sought out the elders, won their trust, and learned their stories, songs, and beliefs.  Rasmussen published ten volumes of notes, and then summarized his grand adventure in Across Arctic America.

I’ve read several books about the Eskimos of Greenland, learning of the endless challenges of Arctic survival.  But the Greenlanders had it easy, compared to the Eskimos of northern Canada who had no access to the sea, and a less dependable food supply.  These inland people had neither blubber nor wood to use for fuel.  They spent the long, terrifically cold winters in unheated huts, dining on frozen meat.  They lived primarily on caribou and salmon.

In the old days, their settlements were located along the caribou migration routes.  Men hunted with bows and arrows, which required extreme patience, waiting for an animal to (maybe) wander within range.  Later, they got guns, which could kill from a greater distance, making it much easier to fill the freezer.  In response, the caribou abandoned their old routes, and went elsewhere.  The hunters starved, and their settlements became Arctic ruins.  While one group starved, another group several miles away might be feasting on abundant meat.

In Eskimo society, when daughters grew up, they married, and joined their husband’s family.  Sons, on the other hand, had obligations to their parents.  Sons were the hunters and fishers, and more sons meant more security.  “It is a general custom that old folk no longer able to provide for themselves commit suicide by hanging.”  Nobody wanted to be a burden on others.

Male infants were usually kept, and most females were killed, except for those who were spoken for.  With the gift of a harpoon or pot, a marriage could be arranged for an infant daughter.  One family had 20 children — ten girls were killed, four sons died of disease, one son drowned, leaving four sons and a daughter.  The mother was happy to have four sons, which would not have been the case if the daughters had been kept.  She had no regrets.  This was normal in their culture.

Unfortunately, when the sons grew up, they discovered a grievous shortage of potential brides.  Polyandry was common (marriages with multiple husbands), but these often generated friction, resulting in an unlucky husband dying violently.  No matter what a group did, overpopulation was impossible, because the supply of food was finite.  Starvation was very common, and there was no shame in cannibalism.

The carrying capacity of the Arctic ecosystem was small, and it varied from month to month.  Each group needed a huge territory.  Warfare was common in some places, even massacres.  Sometimes the expedition came across piles of human bones.  Eskimos fought both Indians and other Eskimos.  It seems to me that the root cause of violence is crowding; humans do not tend to be violent when they have adequate space and food.

Modern consumers, who forage in vast climate controlled shopping centers, might perceive the Eskimo way of life as being unpleasant and undesirable.  But, according to Rasmussen, “they were not only cheerful, but healthy, knowing nothing of any disease beyond the colds that come as a regular epidemic in spring and autumn.”  “A notable feature was their lively good humor and careless, high-spirited manner.”  The women worked very hard, but “they were always happy and contended, with a ready laugh in return for any jest or kindly word.”  Eskimos perceived whites to be uptight and coldly impersonal.

Rasmussen’s book contains many photographs of the wild people he met along the way.  I was spellbound by some of the faces, which were gentle, radiant, and relaxed.  Reading, writing, and arithmetic were unknown to them.  They had no roads, clocks, or understanding of the outside world.  I imagine that the knowledge they possessed was mostly real, practical, and sane — like a deep, clear stream.  My mind feels more like an enormous landfill.

As the expedition got into its homestretch, they passed through gold mining communities, bubbles of prosperity for the lucky ones.  Eskimos were drawn into the cash economy, where they sold handicrafts and acquired sewing machines, kerosene lamps, and cameras.  Hunters were paid high prices for skins, and they hunted “without any consideration for the future or their old age.”  Civilization makes people crazy.

Rasmussen and his two Eskimo companions sailed to Seattle, and then travelled to the skyscraper world of New York City.  The book concludes with an exclamation by Anarulunguaq, his girlfriend for the journey: “Nature is great; but man is greater still.”  Would she have a different opinion today, as man’s great imbalances are destabilizing the Arctic ecosystems, and the rest of the planet, too?

Before sailing from Alaska, Rasmussen spent a few hours with an angakoq (shaman) named Najagneq.  He spoke about the  great spirit called Sila.  When Sila is happy, life is good.  But when men abuse life, and feel no reverence for their daily food, Sila communicates to man “by storm and snow and rain and the fury of the sea; all the forces of nature that men fear.” 

Rasmussen, Knud, Across Arctic America — Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition, University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks, 1999.  [Originally 1927]

Greenland Dreams

I recently took a mental voyage to Greenland, which began when I read Knud Rasmussen’s book, The People of the Polar North, published in 1908.  Rasmussen (1879–1933) was born and raised in Greenland, the son of a Danish minister and his Danish-Eskimo wife.  Most of Knud’s buddies were Eskimos (Inuit), and he fluently spoke both languages.  The family moved to Denmark when Knud was 14, and he soon realized that the wild frontier was far more healthy and alive than the noisy crazy crowds of civilization.

At the age of 23, he eagerly returned to Greenland.  His mission was to document the little known culture and history of his people, before they were overwhelmed by the intense madness of modernity, or driven to extinction by disease.  He had absolute respect for the indigenous culture, and he excelled at getting the wild people to trust him with their stories.  Reading this book struck some deep ancestral chords.  It was a magic portal into a saner and healthier world.  Stories like this are good medicine.  They put things in a clearer perspective.

In those days, Greenland was intensely alive — birds, fish, whales, seals, walruses, reindeer, bears — a precious treasure of abundance and vitality that is beyond the imagination of contemporary minds.  The spiritual realm of the Eskimos embraced the entire family of life, a realm in which humans were no more significant than lemmings or lice.  Humans were not the dominant animal, and Eskimo culture was perfectly free of self-important gods and goddesses.  Everything was alive, and all were related.

In the old days, all things animate and inanimate were alive, and all beings were able to communicate with each other.  People could change into bears, and bears could change into people.  There were far fewer boundaries.  Every community had at least one shaman, and he or she was kept busy attending to the affairs of the spirit world.  They understood the mysteries of hidden things, and had power over the destinies of men.  Rasmussen always sought out the shamans in his travels.

The Eskimos did not have permanent homes; they followed the food.  One group regularly waited for the walruses to come ashore at Taseralik, usually in September.  The huge slow-moving animals were sitting ducks on the rocks, and up to 50 were killed per hour.  The clan spent the long dark winters there, hunting for seals, and dining on the meat and fish they had stored.  In April, when the ice began breaking up, they moved to the mouth of the Ström Fjord, and hunted seal and walrus.  In June, they moved to Iginiarfik and caught capelin, small fish like smelt.  Then they returned to Taseralik to catch halibut.

Living near the Arctic was challenging for two-legged mammals that evolution had fine-tuned for living in the tropics.  By far, Eskimos were the most high-tech subsistence hunters that ever lived.  In open waters, they hunted and fished in kayaks and umiaqs.  When it was time to move camp or visit other villages, they traveled across the ice on dogsleds, which required thick ice.  There were many times when thin ice appeared to be thick ice, and this illusion shortened many lives.  During the long, dark winters, the average temperature was -25° F (-31° C).

Sila, the weather, was a power that dominated Eskimo life.  Greenlanders did not spend their days staring at cell phones, because Sila would blow them away with 150 mph (240 kph) winds, or bury them in sudden avalanches, or wash them away with flash floods, or drown them in stormy seas, or melt the ice they were sledding across.

There was also Nerrivik (“the food dish”), the woman at the bottom of the sea, who ruled the beings of the water world.  She was a moody power, and she often withheld the seals from hungry hunters.  When this happened, shamans were required to journey into her world, tidy her hair, and calm her down.

Rasmussen’s buddy, Peter Freuchen, took a nap during a storm when the temperature was -60° F (-51° C).  When he awoke, his feet were frozen.  This cost him a leg.  Rasmussen told the story of Qumangâpik, who had four wives and 15 children.  The first wife froze to death, the second was buried by an avalanche, the third died of illness, and the fourth froze to death.  Of his 15 children, one starved, four were frozen, and five died of illness.  Qumangâpik froze to death, with his wife and two little children.  Three of his kids outlived him.

In Greenland, it was ridiculously easy to die from brief lapses of attention or the fickle whims of luck.  When they ran out of meat, they ate their dogs.  Then they ate corpses.  Sometimes they killed and ate the weak.  Many times, everyone died.  They did not rot away in nursing homes.  For those who became a burden on the clan, the ride was soon over.  You were either strong and healthy, or you found enjoyment in the afterlife, which was a good place.  There was no Hell for heathen Eskimos.

There was no television, radio, internet, or cell phones.  There were no malls, roads, or cities.  There was no money.  There were no rich or poor.  Nobody starved unless everyone starved.  There were no lawyers, soldiers, farmers, herders, police, politicians, pimps, prostitutes, salespersons, miners, loggers, fashion models, or recreational shoppers.  Eskimos were purely wild and free people, living in a wild and free land, like undamaged human beings.

Eskimos pitied (and giggled at) the Danes, because they suffered from hurricane minds — they never stopped thinking.  Rasmussen once observed an Eskimo who appeared to be deep in thought.  Knud asked him what he was thinking about, and the man laughed.  The only time we think is when we’re running low on meat.  Their language included no tools for discussing abstractions or ideas.  They rarely made plans for tomorrow.  They warmly glowed with “an irresponsible happiness at merely being alive….” 

I also read Gretel Ehrlich’s book, This Cold Heaven, published in 2001.  She was an American who had made several extended visits to Greenland between 1993 and 1999.  She was fascinated by Rasmussen’s stories, and had read the 6,000 pages of his expedition notes.  The chapters of her book flip-flop between discussions of Knud’s life, and descriptions of the folks she met while visiting Greenland.

The recent decades had not been kind for Greenland, as the cancer of a cash economy spread, taking a heavy toll on the remaining wildlife.  But compared to her California home, it seemed like paradise.  Her friend Maria told her, “It’s too bad for you when you visit Greenland, because then you have to keep going back.  When you have been with those people — with the Inuit — you know that you have been with human beings.”

Robert Peary went to the North Pole in 1909.  Like many white lads, the incredible beauty of Inuit women inspired him, with immense throbbing excitement, to toss his Christian virtues to the wind.  In 1997, Ehrlich met two of his granddaughters at Thule.  They lamented that when the Europeans stomped ashore in 1721, there were 16,000 wild heathen souls in all of Greenland.  It wasn’t long before the population fell to just 110, thanks to smallpox.  Now there are 60,000, thanks to the industrial food system.

When Rasmussen traveled across northern Canada in the 1920s, he reported a vast herd of migrating caribou that took three days to pass.  During the warm months, the skies of Greenland were filled with millions of migrating birds that came to nest on rocky islands.  Happy people harvested many birds and eggs.  In 1933, the birds got their revenge.  Kivioq was an Arctic delicacy, consisting of dead auks stuffed into seal gut and allowed to rot for two months.  Rasmussen died from salmonella poisoning after gobbling down a bowl of it.  Urp!

Today, the era of nomadic living is over.  In 1995, the village of Uummannaq was home to 1,400 people and 6,000 dogs.  All settlements reeked of “dog shit, seal guts, and unwashed bodies.”  Epidemics of distemper periodically hammered down canine overpopulation.  Dogs were kept chained all the time, except on hunting trips.  Male dogs that broke free were a public nuisance, and it was the village dogcatcher’s job to simply shoot them on sight.

Ehrlich went on a few hunting trips, riding on a dogsled across the ice.  It felt like a prehistoric experience, but there was one huge difference.  The harpoons and bows had been replaced by high-powered rifles.  It was now far easier to kill seals and polar bears from a distance. 

People no longer hunted and fished for subsistence alone.  In addition to food and furs for their family, they also needed surplus, to pay for electricity, phones, ammunition, heating oil, groceries, computers, cigarettes, alcohol, etc.  The more wildlife they destroyed, the more money they could make, and the more cool stuff they could buy.  This vicious cycle grew into a mass hysteria.  Many people were hunting and fishing as if they were the last generation.

Trouble was born when the Danes first laid eyes on a thriving ecosystem.  Their civilized brains began spinning with excitement, calculating how much wealth could be reaped by exterminating Greenland’s wildlife.  It was impossible for their minds to contemplate the notion of turning around, going home, and leaving the Eskimos in peace.  

Even if the Eskimos had promptly hacked the first missionaries and traders into dog food, they were powerless to prevent the heavily-armed Danes from gang-raping their paradise, and poisoning their ancient culture with the insanity of mindless materialism.  When guns, knives, pots, and matches became available at trading posts, few wild folks anywhere rejected them.  We have a weakness for tools. 

Shortly after Ehrlich’s book was published, a mob of wildlife advocates discovered the reckless destruction in Greenland, and commenced to yowl and bellow.  Greenland shrugged.  It is, after all, the twenty-first century.

New Greenland Government Allows Spring Bird Hunt

Greenland, Day 3: The Dying Hunters

Greenland’s Narwhal Hunters Off the Hook, Again

Greenland: Beluga Quotas - The Sky's The Limit

A Farewell to Greenland’s Wildlife

PS: In 1972, eight Eskimo mummies were discovered at Qilakitsog.  They date to 1460 AD, and were remarkably well-preserved by freeze-drying, including their clothing, tattoos, and even their lice.

Rasmussen, Knud, The People of the Polar North, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, 1908.

Ehrlich, Gretel, This Cold Heaven — Seven Seasons in Greenland, Pantheon Books, New York, 2001.

Before Dogs Became Pets

The saga of dogs is a long strange trip.  Experts agree that all dogs are descendants of wild gray wolves.  They don’t agree when dogs were domesticated, but most say around 14,000 years ago.  Could it be a coincidence that this occurred around the time when humans were getting really good at killing really big animals with stone-tipped lances, and the countryside was dotted with mastodon corpses, and other dainty delicacies?

As humans emigrated from our African home, we moved into wolf country, and learned important skills from our new neighbors.  Wolves were social creatures, like we were.  We both lived in hierarchical groups.  We both chased and ate the same critters.  We both scavenged each other’s leftovers. 

Wolves and humans coexisted for a long time before dogs emerged.  Wolves learned to hang out on the fringe of human camps from time to time, because they were a source of food to scavenge.  They found bones to gnaw and offal to wolf down.  They slobbered whilst inhaling the intoxicating aroma of meat roasting on our campfires.  They found human excrement to be indescribably delicious, an overwhelming passion that may be the prime reason for the creation of dogs.

This scavenging activity became a regular habit, and humans actively classified their canine visitors as naughty or nice.  Aggressive nuisance wolves were killed, while the presence of more timid wolves was tolerated.  By and by, over many generations, this selection process resulted in dogs.  Dogs were smaller than wolves, and had smaller skulls and brains.  We selected for dogs having juvenile characteristics, because they were less trouble to have around.  Dogs helpfully announced the arrival of humans and beasts, and they drove away other predators.

Before going further, I must reveal my motives.  I believe that the domestication of plants and animals played a major role in the process that got us into our current predicament, the Earth Crisis.  Wild humans and wild wolves once lived in a manner that worked quite well, for a very long time.  Today, both are endangered.  Meanwhile, the population of domesticated humans and dogs has grown explosively, because of a temporary bubble of abundant energy.  The family of life is temporarily out of balance.

Humans and dogs live in the highest density in poorer regions, where many are malnourished and unhealthy.  In prosperous regions, humans and dogs are more likely to be over-nourished, neurotic, stressed out, and excessive consumers of resources (trendy $1,500 purebreds are not shit-eating dogs).  

I am not here to judge or criticize dog owners, and I mean that sincerely.  My goal is to explore the dark side of domestication, because there are many lessons to be learned — knowledge that may be important for any attempts to return to genuine sustainability.

Many assume that dogs have always been pets, since our days in the caves, but this is not true.  Dogs had a semi-wild, pariah-like existence for thousands of years before being reduced to pets, and losing their freedom.  Dozens of gray wolves were interviewed for this story, and they unanimously agreed that wolves never had any desire whatsoever to become dogs.  In fact, they were grievously insulted by the mere suggestion of this.

In his book Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez told many wolf stories.  Once upon a time, in Alaska’s Goldstream Valley, wolves killed 42 dogs one winter.  The Athbascan Indians took a vote, and by a landslide chose not to retaliate against the wolves.  Why?  Because everyone knew that wolves hated dogs.  Case closed.

I was repeatedly surprised in my research to discover that hunter-gatherers had little respect for dogs.  Dogs were uniquely second-class animals.  Domestication had diminished them to the degree that they were no longer able to survive in the wild, outside the human sphere (similar to sheep, cattle, maize, and consumers).  This serious abnormality was perfectly obvious to every illiterate, uneducated savage.

Wild hunting people recognized that wolves were beings that possessed immense spiritual power, according to Lopez.  The Nunamiut understood that wolves had souls, but not their sled dogs.  In the Sioux language, the term for wolf was shunkmanitu tanka, “the animal that looks like a dog (but) is a powerful spirit.”  Dogs were banned from ceremonial lodges, except when they arrived in the stew kettle, as they often did.

In The Way of the Shaman, Michael Harner discussed the animals that shamans used as guardian spirits.  Guardian spirits were almost always wild and untamed.  Domesticated animals typically lacked the spiritual power required for shamanic purposes.  (Cars are often named after powerful wild things, never pudgy barnyard riffraff.)

In The Forest People, Colin Turnbull described how Pygmies treated dogs: “And the hunting dogs, valuable as they are, get kicked around mercilessly from the day they are born to the day they die.”

In The Continuum Concept, Jean Liedloff wrote that the Yequana people never imposed their will on others, but with dogs they used strict discipline, hitting them with fists, sticks, and stones.

Dogs inherited coprophilia from their wolf ancestors (an obsession for the smell and taste of excrement).  In Book of the Eskimos, Peter Freuchen wrote that sled dogs were often a nuisance when someone attempted to take a crap.  Sometimes a good buddy would drive the dogs away with a whip until you were finished.  Dogs would sometimes have bloody fights over fresh turds. 

Freuchen also mentioned that it was perfectly acceptable to copulate with a dog when she was in heat, as long as it was done outdoors, in the open.  Brighter lads never attempted this with wolves.

In The Harmless People, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas discussed the dogs that lived with the Bushmen.  They were typically skeletal and weak from hunger.  Dogs were owned and named, but they were only fed excrement.  When they tried to snatch human food, they were stoned or whipped.  In return for regular hot meals, the grateful dogs drove away leopards, jackals, and hyenas.

In Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, John Lame Deer wrote, “There was great power in a wolf, even in a coyote.  You have made him into a freak — a toy poodle, a Pekingese, a lap dog….  That’s where you’ve fooled yourselves.  You have not only altered, declawed, and malformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it to yourselves.”

In Ojibway Heritage, Basil Johnston told some dog tales.  In their creation stories, humans and other animals worked together in harmony.  All animals served the family of life in some way — except for the lowly dog, which had nothing to offer.  Dogs were dependent on humans for their survival, and the other animals had no sympathy: “He who allows himself to be servile deserves servitude.”

Other animals were outraged by the treachery of dogs, and considered killing them, but Bear objected.  He told the dogs: “For your betrayal, you shall no longer be regarded as a brother among us.  Instead of man, we shall attack you.  Worse than this, from now on you shall eat only what man has left, sleep in the cold and rain, and receive kicks as a reward for your fidelity.”

To a devout Muslim, a dog is an unclean animal that drives away angels, annuls prayers, and limits their owner’s benefits in paradise.  Muslims who touch a dog require ritual purification.  In 2011, a journalist commented that in the village of Novosasitli, Dagestan, dogs do not bark when the call to prayer beckons, because all unclean animals have been exterminated.

Likewise, their Jewish and Christian neighbors have been long-time hard-core dog haters.  “Dog” appears in the Bible 41 times, always harshly scribbled with venomous ink, never fondness.  For example:

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”  (Matthew 7:6)

“Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.  For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”  (Revelations 22:14-15)

So, dogs have not been beloved pets since the beginning.  They were the first offspring of domestication, and they were diminished by it.  As many times has they click the Undo button, nothing happens — they remain dogs.  Woof!

To be continued.  Stay tuned.

Book of the Eskimos

Peter Freuchen (1886-1957) was a Dane who set up a trading post in Greenland in 1910.  He spent 50 years among the Inuit, and knew them when they still lived in their traditional Stone Age manner.  He married an Inuit woman and had two children.  Freuchen’s Book of the Eskimos describes how these people lived, and provides us with a window into a world far different from our own. (Today, the word “Eskimo” is rude.)

The Arctic was the last region to be settled by humans.  It’s an extremely cold region, with just two frost-free months, and the sun doesn’t shine for four months of the year.  What’s for breakfast?  Meat.  What’s for lunch?  Meat.  Dinner?  Guess what!  They lived almost entirely on animal foods from birds, fish, and mammals of the sea and tundra.  These foods were processed and preserved in a variety of different ways, many of which would gag outsiders.  Blubber was their fuel for heat, cooking, and light.

Survival in this harsh land demanded cooperation and sharing.  Meat was community property, and no one was denied access to it (although regular freeloaders were not warmly regarded).  Spoken discourse was typically indirect, non-confrontational, and comically self-effacing.  Functional communities had no use for those who suffered from grandiose egos or other anti-social perversions.

Despite their harsh life, the Inuit had a tremendous zeal for living.  Sexually, they enjoyed great freedom.  Wife swapping was common and perfectly acceptable.  Young people (even children) were free to fully explore the mysteries of tender pleasures.  Orgies, singing, and storytelling sweetened the monotony of long winter nights.  Freuchen writes that “they always enjoy life with an enviable intensity, and they believe themselves to be the happiest people on earth living in the most beautiful country there is.”

Anthropologists have shown us that nomadic foraging cultures had a number of advantages, compared to agricultural societies.  Foraging societies in warmer regions typically had a number of aspects in common.  Inuit society did not neatly fit into the same pattern of characteristics.

The common pattern is that nomadic foragers did not domesticate animals — they lived in a reality where all animals were wild, sacred relatives, teachers, and equals.  But the Inuit sled dogs were owned, controlled, and exploited (it was perfectly acceptable to copulate with a dog when she was in heat, as long as it was done outdoors, in the open).  These sled dogs were maybe 80% wild.  They would ravage the settlement and eat everything if allowed to run loose, so they were kept tied.  Their teeth were filed down to keep them from biting apart their tethers.  Sled dogs did not in any way resemble the neurotic, infantilized canines of modern suburbia.  They only responded to instructions from the dog whip.

The common pattern believes that women enjoyed their highest levels of respect and equality in nomadic foraging societies.  Abuse was one of agriculture’s many hideous offspring.  But in numerous passages, Freuchen describes husbands fiercely beating their troublesome wives bloody (“He beat her like a dog.”).  He wrote that “a woman is after all born to be the victim of men.”  But in another section, he mentioned that Inuit women had “perpetual smiles,” and noted that “they seem to have more natural grace, more zest for life than their white sisters.”

The common pattern celebrates the notion that nomadic foragers enjoyed an easy life with abundant leisure time.  They only “worked” one or two days a week.  In warmer regions, there was an abundance of food, and starvation was rare.  In Inuit country, life was far more challenging, and starvation was a major threat.  Sewing needles were vital survival tools.  If they broke or wore out, clothing could not be mended, and ripped britches could be a death sentence.  There are many reasons why the Arctic was the last region to be settled.

On the other hand, the Inuit did fit into the common pattern with regard to active population management, which was essential to their survival.  Infanticide was common and normal, and daughters were not as desirable as sons (future meat producers).  When hunting was bad, children were killed to spare the group from the misery of starvation.  One woman survived a spell of bad hunting by eating her husband and three children.  Folks who could no longer keep up with the hunting party were abandoned.  Those who were too old to contribute to the wellbeing of the community committed suicide, or asked their children to hang them or stab them — and these requests were honored without hysteria or drama, often during a party when everyone was in high spirits.

A number of aspects of Inuit life are shocking to many in consumer society.  But the reverse is also true.  The Inuit were dumbfounded by the astonishing foolishness of the Danes: “Alas, you are a child in this country, and a child in your thoughts.”  When greed-crazed Norwegians moved in and made a quick fortune by massacring the fur seals, Inuit communities starved.  Every way of life has plusses and minuses.  Unlike consumer society, the Inuit hunters lived sustainably for several thousand years — until they met the white folks.  Is there anything more precious than a sustainable way of life?

Freuchen had great respect for the Inuit, while at the same time believing that Danish society was more advanced.  At his trading post he provided guns, bullets, knives, traps, pots, matches, and other things that the Inuit had happily lived without for thousands of years.  It made him feel good that he was helping them modernize.

When hunters used bows and arrows to hunt for reindeer in flat wide open tundra with no place to hide, they sometimes had to lay motionless in the snow for two days, waiting for the prey to move within range, which didn’t always happen.  Guns allowed them to kill from far away, which led to more meat, which led to more Inuit.  Freuchen eventually came to realize that modernization was not a free lunch: “these favorable living conditions brought about an increase in the population that began to overtax the resources of the country.”  Whoops!

Modernization is what had driven Freuchen to Greenland in the first place.  When he had been attending med school in Copenhagen, a seriously injured man arrived, and none of the doctors thought he’d survive.  After six months of careful treatment, the man fully healed — an absolute miracle!  The staff proudly watched as the man walked out of the hospital, stepped off the curb, and immediately got killed by a car.  There were almost no cars in Copenhagen in 1905.  Freuchen’s mind snapped. 

Today, the modernized Inuit have guns, televisions, phones, nice wooden houses, and motor boats.  Snowmobiles have temporarily replaced the sled dogs.  What they’ve lost is a sustainable way of life, and a healthy traditional future for their grandchildren.  When the cheap energy is gone, it will be rough sledding.

Peter Freuchen, Book of the Eskimos, World Publishing Company, Cleveland, 1961.