Tags
Language
Tags
March 2024
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
25 26 27 28 29 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 1 2 3 4 5 6

"The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World" by Wade Davis (Repost)

Posted By: exLib
"The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World" by Wade Davis  (Repost)

"The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World" by Wade Davis
CBC Massey Lecture
Ноusе of Аnаnsi Prеss | 2009 | ISBN: 0887847668 9780887847660 | 273 pages | PDF | 13 MB

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? Anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world’s indigenous cultures.

Davis's list of cultural atrocities perpetrated in the name of technological advance is a long one, made all the more sobering by the examples he gives of cultural revival in certain key areas of the world, reminders of what has been lost elsewhere.
Since 1976, there has been a renaissance in Polynesia, for example, with the sailing of the Hokule'a, a re-creation of an ancient Polynesian vessel, first from Hawaii to Tahiti, a distance of 4,400 kilometres, and then from Hawaii to the Easter Islands, a voyage of 10,000 kilometres, without the aid of electronic navigational equipment or even a compass.
Amazing feats prove, among other things, that Thor Heyerdahl was completely wrong in his assumption that colonizers to Polynesia could only have come from South America. They came from New Guinea as long ago as 1500 BC, travelling fantastic distances using “wayfinders,” navigators who sensed the presence of islands by reading stars, the sea, wind, clouds and light. “One of the tragedies of history,” Davis writes, “was the failure of early Europeans … to make any effort to study and record this extraordinary repository of seafaring knowledge.”

Contents
Season of the Brown Hyena
The Wayfinders
Peoples of the Anaconda
Sacred Geography
Century of the Wind
Annotated Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index

with TOC BookMarkLinks