I have had the privilege of attending two lectures by Wade Davis, and he knows how to hold the attention of an audience. I have also read several books and magazine articles by him, and they are all excellent. Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest is especially good.
The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World originated with a CBC Massie Lecture, delivered in 2009. This book was published about the same time. If anything, the message is more important now than it was 15 years ago.
Now, Davis is a scientist. He doesn't believe that the Earth rests on the back of a very large turtle, and neither should you. He also doesn't mention that ancient cultures had some traditions such as human sacrifice and pedicide that most people find abhorrent. That's because the cultures Davis describes have managed to exist for thousands of years without killing each other, starving to death, or destroying their habitat, things that our society hasn't figured out yet. As he put it, "to acknowledge the wonder of other cultures is not to denigrate our way of life but rather to recognize with some humility that other peoples, flawed as they too may be, nevertheless contribute to our collective heritage, the human repertoire of ideas, beliefs, and adaptations that have historically allowed us as a species to thrive."
I think that the most interesting chapter is "The Wayfinders", about Polynesian culture. Davis points out that the theories of Thor Heyerdahl have been discredited. Instead, migration to Polynesia was eastward, from Melanesia, starting around 1,500 BC. The main points, though, are that Polynesians are highly skilled navigators, using the stars instead of a compass and sextant. And because of the mobility this makes possible, the widely separated islands of Polynesia have a common culture, connected by long-standing traditions.
The next chapter, "People of the Anaconda", tells the fascinating story of the journey of Francisco de Orellana and Gaspar de Carvajal eastward from the Andes Mountains to the mouth of the Amazon. Carvajal wrote an account of the journey, with descriptions of the tribes they encountered, that was long regarded as mostly fictional. Modern anthropologists have a different take. They have learned that inhabitants of the Amazon did a remarkable job of adapting to a hostile environment by talented hunting and fishing (Waorani hunters can smell animal urine at 40 paces and identify the species) and sustainable agricultural techniques (they domesticated 138 plants).
One point that Davis makes is that ancient cultures are capable of adapting to change, if they aren't destroyed by external forces. The Lakota now use rifles instead of bows and arrows, but they are still Lakota. In the final chapter, "Century of the Wind", Davis talks about the destruction of culture, in places like Tibet and The Congo, and the devastating effects of moving people from their traditional lands to cities. He also explains why diversity of cultures is important, and how the rampant destruction of cultures during this period of history is unprecedented and dangerous.
The original lecture series is archived by the CBC here.
