Post by Magnet Man on Mar 17, 2006 17:18:28 GMT -5
Animism: ‘The belief that natural objects, natural phenomena and the Universe itself possesses soul’ (Webster’s Dictionary)
My first lesson in Animism in the Kalahari, began one morning after I had made contact with a hunter/gatherer family group out in the Central Desert.
Instead of accompanying the males on their daily round of checking their traps and looking for fresh spoor to follow on a hunt, as I had done on previous days, this morning, I decided to accompany the women and children with their digging-sticks and springbok hide tote bags, and watch them while they gathered wild vegetables.
As a large perimeter around the Bushman camp had already been thoroughly picked over, it was some time before we reached an area that had not been harvested and I could begin my observations.
The group began foraging through sparse patches of tsama melon and wild cucumber, and digging in the sand for roots and tubers. The smaller children joined in the search by competing to be the fi rst to spot a new food source, grubbing for insects, chasing down and capturing the odd lizard. The harvest disappeared into the gradually bulging bags slung over the women’s bony shoulders. Towards midday the foragers suddenly moved off in a lateral direction. Now, for some reason, the harvesting seemed to be more selective; food sources pointed out by youngsters were studiously avoided, and the children admonished not to harvest them. It took me a while to realize that the women had reached the edge of the family’s hunting territory. There was a line in the sand, which the women could see and I could not, beyond which it was taboo to trespass, because it marked the beginning of the neighboring family group’s larder.
The basic social integrity that this Stone Age group exhibited by not crossing that invisible line and taking selfi sh advantage of short-term expediency, thereby preserving a long-term relationship of peaceful grace with their relatives, made the subtle wisdom of survival logic very clear at that moment. The women were responding to an unwritten code of specie interrelationships that manifests in our consciousness as common decency.
My first lesson in Animism in the Kalahari, began one morning after I had made contact with a hunter/gatherer family group out in the Central Desert.
Instead of accompanying the males on their daily round of checking their traps and looking for fresh spoor to follow on a hunt, as I had done on previous days, this morning, I decided to accompany the women and children with their digging-sticks and springbok hide tote bags, and watch them while they gathered wild vegetables.
As a large perimeter around the Bushman camp had already been thoroughly picked over, it was some time before we reached an area that had not been harvested and I could begin my observations.
The group began foraging through sparse patches of tsama melon and wild cucumber, and digging in the sand for roots and tubers. The smaller children joined in the search by competing to be the fi rst to spot a new food source, grubbing for insects, chasing down and capturing the odd lizard. The harvest disappeared into the gradually bulging bags slung over the women’s bony shoulders. Towards midday the foragers suddenly moved off in a lateral direction. Now, for some reason, the harvesting seemed to be more selective; food sources pointed out by youngsters were studiously avoided, and the children admonished not to harvest them. It took me a while to realize that the women had reached the edge of the family’s hunting territory. There was a line in the sand, which the women could see and I could not, beyond which it was taboo to trespass, because it marked the beginning of the neighboring family group’s larder.
The basic social integrity that this Stone Age group exhibited by not crossing that invisible line and taking selfi sh advantage of short-term expediency, thereby preserving a long-term relationship of peaceful grace with their relatives, made the subtle wisdom of survival logic very clear at that moment. The women were responding to an unwritten code of specie interrelationships that manifests in our consciousness as common decency.
