Wild Free and Happy Sample 13

[Note: This is the thirteenth sample from my rough draft of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy.  I don’t plan on reviewing more books for a while.  My blog is home to reviews of 200 books, and you are very welcome to explore them.  The Search field on the right side will find words in the full contents of all rants and reviews, if you are interested in specific authors, titles, or subjects.]

Modes of Communication

All forms of life, both plants and animals, seem to communicate in various ways, sending and receiving information with the life around them, via sounds, smells, chemicals, behaviors, gestures, and so on.  When I walk through a forest, I often hear warnings of my arrival being announced by noisy birds or squirrels.  On dark nights, when I quietly wander past a pond where the spring peepers are roaring in celebration, they all suddenly become silent.  In a rainforest, some calls warn of an approaching leopard, while different calls broadcast a snake alert. 

Modern humans do not perceive or understand most of the constant communication taking place in the natural world.  Jon Young learned nature awareness from his mentor, Tom Brown, and became highly attuned to bird language.  One time, he went along on a field trip with ornithology students.  He heard a call that warned of an approaching Cooper’s hawk, and mentioned this to the others.  The professor winced and hissed “that’s impossible!”  A minute later, the bird flew by.  The students were amazed.  They wondered why their highly educated professor did not understand bird language.

Clive Finlayson mentioned that hunters in Spain still use traditional technology to attract birds.  During breeding season, they blow on rabbit bone whistles that imitate the mating calls of quails.  Upon hearing the fake urgent pleas for hot romance, lust-crazed males would speed to the hunters, who could then catch them with their bare hands.

Nonhuman animals communicate about the here and now: “tiger coming.”  Without words, baboons can communicate irritation, contentment, excitement, and so on.  In addition to this basic mode, humans also have the ability to vocalize unusual sequences of grunts, clicks, gasps, and moans.  Words enable the possibility of extremely complex communication.  We can jabber about the here and now, the future, the past, events in other places, and a million other subjects.

Communication is sometimes mysteriously telepathic.  Robert Wolff was astonished by the Sng’oi people of Malaysia.  Whenever he made a rare unannounced visit, someone would be waiting for him on the trail, ready to lead him to their current camp.  How did they know he was coming?  They said that a feeling inspired them to go to the trail, be there, and respond to what happened.  Jon Young told a similar story about the Bushmen of the Kalahari.  Whenever you came to visit them, someone would be waiting.

We are the word critters.  Words bounce off our lips and tongues, zoom through the air, and plunge into the ears of others.  We learn words, speak words, hear words, think words, dream words.  Nobody knows exactly when hominins began using words, but many scholars have imaginative opinions, none of which are supported by compelling archaeological evidence.

The first words babies learn are nouns (mama, dada).  Then comes verbs, stuff to do (pee, poop, eat).  Later comes feelings (happy, sad, tired, afraid), and abstractions (good, bad, progress, capitalism).  At about 18 months, we begin assembling words into sequences.  Everything significant to us has a name — other people, species of plants and animals, rivers, hills, stone formations, stars, tools, and countless others.

Paul Shepard wrote about two scientists who raised young chimps in their home, along with their own children of similar age.  The chimps were at least as intelligent as children, until the children were three or four, learned language, and left the chimps in the dust.  If the kids had been raised by wild chimps, they would have grown up to be intelligent animals, free from the enormous burdens of our cultural baggage, much of it unwholesome and crazy making.

Complex language was certainly an asset for survival in the hunter-gatherer days.  It increased our ancestors’ ability to conjure clever new tricks and accumulate them.  Over time, the power of the word critters intensified.  At some point in the long journey, excess cleverness forced them to swerve over the line of ecological balance, and into the helter-skelter lane.  Hominins got too big for their britches in the dance of the family of life.

 Cleverness never rests.  The growing herd developed a growing ecological footprint.  Food resources became more and more scarce, forcing the transition into plant and animal domestication.  By and by, this led to a huge escalation in the power of the word critters.  They learned how to encode words into visual symbols that could be penned or painted onto papyrus, scratched into clay, chiseled into stone, cast into metal, converted into digital pixels, and so on.  Then the word symbols could be arranged into sequences that conveyed important, detailed, informative meanings (similar to the fascinating stories told to hungry San trackers by the spoor of horny warthogs).

It’s interesting that the oldest written story found so far is the Epic of Gilgamesh, the saga of a lunatic king who built the imperial city of Uruk, in what is now Iraq, in about 2700 B.C.  The story, scratched into clay tablets, describes a lecherous slime ball who worked hard to expand organic agriculture by deforesting lands along the Euphrates River, which triggered catastrophic erosion and flooding, and pissed off the gods.  By 3200 B.C., Uruk was the biggest city in the world, home to 25,000+ people.  Today, Uruk is a crude pile of brown rubble sitting amidst a desolate barren moonscape.  Its spoor has an important message for ambitious glory seekers: “Don’t live like we did.”

In a previous section, we jabbered about how the rate of technological innovation was accelerated when people lived in dense populations, and were exposed to ideas and gizmos from other cultures, via long distance exploration, trade, and conflict.  In the digital age, the flow of exotic information has shifted into warp drive.  Technology enables written words, spoken words, and images to be sent to the other side of the planet in a second, with the click of a mouse.

On my bookshelves are rows of manuscripts written by many thinkers, from different cultures, from different eras — a crowd of interesting minds and stories.  We have never before been able to store such vast amounts of information.  And we have never before lived in such a destructive manner.  This is not a coincidence.  Almost all of that information is about stuff that is unhealthy, unnecessary, and unsustainable.

Industrial civilization is already in the early stages of collapse, and this is obvious to folks who are paying close attention to reality.  Some worry that collapse will lead to a catastrophic loss of accumulated information.  Some day in the coming decades, the grid, the lights, the laptops, and the cell phones will go dark forever.  I expect that there are folks alive today who will see the last car die, and the last supermarket close.  Without ongoing maintenance, time will eventually compost our wonderful libraries.  When the oceans of modern data evaporate and fade from memory, our information will come from fireside stories, the here and now, and the ecosystem we inhabit.

Jon Young has devoted his life to helping people restore three types of severed connections — connection with others, connection with self, and connection with nature.  My generation grew up playing outdoors with the neighbor kids.  I was lucky to live close to forests, lakes, and open land.  We had no iPods, cell phones, video games, or laptops.  Our social networking was face to face, in the here and now, and preferably outdoors. 

We were at home in nature.  We built forts, climbed trees, went swimming, and caught frogs, turtles, salamanders, night crawlers, and fish.  We played until mom called us home.  Where I live now, it’s common to see tweakers, junkies, and other homeless folks camping amidst trash piles throughout the neighborhood.  It’s getting unusual to see children playing.

Most of us spend most of our lives indoors, and our visits outdoors usually take place in manmade surroundings.  Few of us spend our entire lives in the place we were born, and develop an intimate and reverent relationship with the wild ecosystem around us.  This is a most unusual situation for tropical primates, or any other animals.  We’re like the lads who walked on the moon in their silver spacesuits — lost, disconnected, homeless wanderers.

Folks in a post-collapse world are going to be devoting most of their attention to daily survival.  This will require them to actually wander out into their ecosystem, on foot, and attempt to blend into it.  When the land provides you with fish, nuts, and berries, you develop a spirit of gratitude and respect — connection.  Your life will come into communication with the family of life around you.

Collapse is a strong medicine that will delete us or cure us.  It will liberate us from countless toxic addictions, behaviors, beliefs, and relationships that have led us to the brink.  So, cheer up!  Time is running out for the most insane and destructive experiment in Earth’s history.  Better days are coming.  One way or another, healing will begin.

Pleistocene Hunting in Europe



Humankind is confronted with an enormous and perplexing riddle.  We’ve developed a way of life that is ecologically super-idiotic (but look at our awesome phones!), and pounding the vitality of the natural world (and soon we’ll have self-driving cars!).  The great riddle is how did we get into this mess?  Can we get out of it?  Who are we?  Where did we come from?

Many books reveal important clues.  Bonobo described our closest living relatives, a species that has remained sustainable for millions of years.  The Art of Tracking revealed our ancient roots as bipedal hunters and scavengers, which kept our ancestors alive for several million years.  Hunters of the Recent Past examined the communal hunting practiced by Homo sapiens who struggled to adapt to living in temperate and subarctic climates, during the last 15,000 years or so. 

Now, I want to peek at life from 40,000 to 20,000 years ago.  This peek looks at the Homo sapiens who had recently moved into Europe — the ancestors of many white skinned folks who are reading my words in English.  In those days, Europe enjoyed an astonishing abundance of wildlife.  Peek at the fantastic cave paintings of Chauvet or Lascaux.

For my tropical primate ancestors to survive in a challenging non-tropical climate, they had to live like moon explorers, with weatherproof shelters, warm clothing, blazing hearths, and a well-stocked food locker for the deep freeze months.  The giant hyenas, cave bears, cave lions, and saber-tooth cats refused to join PETA, and took great delight in brutally killing the delicious primates in fur coats.  Eventually, groups that were clever and lucky figured out ways to exist for a while, riding a scary climate change roller coaster.

Roche de Solutré

At the Roche de Solutré site, near Mâcon, France, archaeologists have found the remains of up to 100,000 horses.  Prior to 1866, when experts realized the bones were prehistoric, local farmers had been hauling them away for many years, using them for fertilizer.  In some places, the surface of the ground was paved with ancient horse bones.  The valley was a common route for the migrations of animal herds.  In the summer months, herds grazed at higher elevations to avoid heat and insects.  Winter months were spent grazing on the warmer floodplain of the Saône River.

The bone beds were located fairly close to the bottom of a steep limestone cliff.  For years, folks theorized that the horses had been killed by driving them over the edge.  At this site, a more likely scenario was that hunters drove the animals into natural rock corrals, or box canyons, where they were trapped.  Once cut off from escape, they were killed, butchered, dried, and smoked.  Wild horses were extremely dangerous prey.  Big strong stallions would aggressively attack hunters, and stomp them to bloody bits.

The oldest bones are 55,000 years old, horses killed by Neanderthals.  They were covered by six feet (1.8 m) of sterile soil.  The next layer is deep, containing the remains of animals killed by Homo sapiens between 37,000 and 10,000 years ago.  Prior to 22,000 years ago, the majority of bones were horses.  After that, reindeer bones were dominant.  This was an era of climate shifts.

Předmostí

Předmostí is near the city of Přerov, in the Czech Republic.  It is located at the southern end of the Moravian Gate, a narrow corridor that passes between the Carpathian Mountains to the east, and the Sudeten range in the west, linking southern Poland and Moravia.  It has long been a strategic trade and communications route.  Naturally, it was also a route for the seasonal migrations of game animals in the Pleistocene, including mammoths.

Předmostí has the largest mammoth bone accumulations in central Europe.  The skeletons of more than a thousand have been uncovered so far.  Mammoth bones were used in the construction of their huts.  Excavations have found hearths, a cemetery, stone and bone tools, and carvings made from mammoth ivory.  One carving has been named the Venus of Předmostí. 

Folks inhabited Předmostí between 27,000 and 25,000 years ago, and again later, about 20,000 years ago.  During this time period, at many locations in central Europe, numerous Venus figurines have been found.  HERE are some examples.  The figurines inspired archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to imagine a paradise of goddess worshipping people that preceded the dark arrival of patriarchy and bloody warfare… a pleasant dream.

Dolní Věstonice

Dolní Věstonice and Pavlov are small neighboring villages north of Mikulov, in the Czech Republic.  In the twentieth century, when a villager decided to dig a cellar, he discovered the remains of a large dwelling built with mammoth bones and tusks.  Multiple excavation sites in these villages have revealed fascinating details about Pleistocene hunters, who lived there from 29,000 to 24,500 years ago.  They lived on terraces overlooking the river, where they had an excellent view of the vast treeless steppe below.  These huts were common in central Europe.  HERE is a map of them, and HERE are many images of mammoth bone huts.

At one camp, four huts were located close together, and the small settlement was surrounded by a low wall made of mammoth bones and rocks, covered with brush and turf.  The huts were something like teepees, covered with animal skins.  They had a circular foundation made of rocks and heavy bones.  Between the huts was a large outdoor fire pit.  Up the hill was a small hut containing a kiln for baking clay.  This is the earliest evidence of making ceramics (they did not make pottery).  They created a variety of figurines, including the heads of bears, foxes, and lions, and female figurines with bulging breasts and buttocks.  These may be the earliest art.

At a nearby location, the largest lodge was 50 feet long (15 m) by 20 feet wide (7 m), and had five hearths.  At one hearth, two long mammoth bones were stuck in the ground, to support a roasting spit.  Southeast of the lodge were piles of bones, including about 100 mammoths, mostly young.  There were also bones of horses, reindeer, hares, wolves, and foxes.  At one dig, they found the remains of a child wearing a necklace with 27 fox teeth.  The skull was covered with red ochre, and the body was covered with the shoulder blades of mammoths. 

Artists have studied the skulls found in the area, and made paintings of what the people would have looked like in life.  When exhibited in Prague, the portrait of a prehistoric wild woman embarrassed the public — because she looked too modern, not like a dirty primitive beast — she looked like the proper and dignified ladies in the gallery (gulp!).  Many awesome paintings can be found HERE.

Great Leap Forward

The sites mentioned above existed prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (20,000 to 15,000 years ago), an era of intense cold that froze out many species of flora and fauna.  Some human supremacists see these mammoth hunters as a glorious breakthrough in the human saga, when we finally ceased being ordinary animals — dumb brutes unable to sing, speak, reason, make ornaments, paint caves, invent deities, or become entranced by smart phones.  They call this transition the Great Leap Forward — a miraculous advance as important as the Industrial Revolution.  (Of course, this could only take place in Europe, home of the most brilliant humans of all.)

The Pleistocene epoch spanned from 2.6 million years ago, to 11,700 years ago, and it included many intense ice ages.  At the end of the Pleistocene, there was a surge of extinctions; a large number of megafauna species vanished in North America, mostly between 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.  Some experts blame humans for overhunting, others blame climate change, and many blame a combination.

In Europe, fewer extinctions occurred, and they took place over a longer period of time.  Many of the species that went extinct were giant-sized, compared to their modern relatives.  Cave bears and European hippos vanished around 24,000 years ago — both species had been around for over a million years.  Homotherium, a genus of saber-tooth cats, existed for five million years before vanishing 28,000 years ago.  European cave lions vanished 10,000 years ago, after 1.9 million years.  Cave hyenas were gone by 11,000 years ago, after 3.5 million years.  Irish elk were gone by 8,000 years ago, after 400,000 years in Europe.  Woolly mammoths were gone by 14,000 years ago, after 400,000 years.  Woolly rhinoceros vanished 10,000 years ago, after 3.6 million years in Eurasia.

Was the Great Leap Forward a great booboo?  Did overhunting encourage the emergence of agriculture and civilization?  Should we have stayed in tropical Africa, and skipped our nightmarish experiment in technological innovation?  Why don’t bonobos need psych meds?  Good luck with the riddle!  Have a nice day!

Image at top by Libor Balák.

Fagan, Brian, Cro-Magnon:  How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans, Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2010.

Kurtén, Björn, Pleistocene Mammals of Europe, Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, 1968.

Svoboda, Jiri, and Vojen Lozek, Hunters Between East and West: The Paleolithic of Moravia, Springer Science, New York, 1996.

Stringer, Chris, Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth, Times Books, New York, 2012.

Ward, Peter D., The Call of Distant Mammoths, Copernicus, New York, 1997.

HERE are paintings of life in central Europe from 20,000 to 12,500 years ago.

HERE is a large collection of photos and random notes describing the Kostenki sites along the Don River in Russia.  Kostenki is notable for the mammoth bone huts found there.

HERE is a large collection of interesting photos, maps, and random notes describing the Dolní Věstonice and Pavlov sites in the Czech Republic.