The Old Way

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One of our most influential anthropologists reevaluates her long and illustrious career by returning to her roots and the roots of life as we know it.When Elizabeth Marshall Thomas first arrived in Africa to live among the Kalahari San, or bushmen, it was 1950, she was nineteen years old, and these last surviving hunter gatherers were living as humans had lived for 15,000 centuries Thomas wound up writing about their world in a seminal work, The Harmless People 1959 It has never gone out of print.Back then, this was uncharted territory and little was known about our human origins Today, our beginnings are better understood And after a lifetime of interest in the bushmen, Thomas has come to see that their lifestyle reveals great, hidden truths about human evolution.As she displayed in her bestseller, The Hidden Life of Dogs, Thomas has a rare gift for giving voice to the voices we don t usually listen to, and helps us see the path that we have taken in our human journey In The Old Way, she shows how the skills and customs of the hunter gatherer share much in common with the survival tactics of our animal predecessors And since it is knowledge, not objects, that endure over time, Thomas vividly brings us to see how linked we are to our origins in the animal kingdom.The history of mankind that most of us know is only the tip of the iceberg, a brief stint compared to fifteen thousand centuries of life as roving clans that seldom settled down adapted every day to changes in environment and food supply, and lived for the most part like the animal ancestors from which they evolved Those origins are not so easily abandoned, Thomas suggests, and our wired, documented, and market driven society has plenty to learn from the Bushmen of the Kalahari about human evolution As she displayed in The Hidden Life of Dogs, Thomas helps us see the path that we have taken in our human journey In The Old Way, she shows how the skills and customs of the hunter gatherer share much in common with the survival tactics of our animal predecessors And since it is knowledge, not objects, that endure over time, Thomas brings us to see how linked we are to our origins in the animal kingdom. Read The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas – kino-fada.fr The Old Way A Story of the First People is an absolutely fascinating account of the Kung, or Ju wasi The People , people of the Kalahari Desert region of southwestern Africa Elizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote this book in 2006, based upon the many years that she and her family spent with these amazing people starting in the early 1950s In fact, Thomas s mother ended up publishing several anthropological monographs through Harvard University describing the Kung hunter gatherer lifestyle in t The Old Way A Story of the First People is an absolutely fascinating account of the Kung, or Ju wasi The People , people of the Kalahari Desert region of southwestern Africa Elizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote this book in 2006, based upon the many years that she and her family spent with these amazing people starting in the early 1950s In fact, Thomas s mother ended up publishing several anthropological monographs through Harvard University describing the Kung hunter gatherer lifestyle in this desolate and unforgiving landscape Thomas herself, as a young woman, spent several years living with and getting to know the Kung, and recorded her observations in her personal journals Her older brother, John, spent most of his life with these people, working tirelessly on their behalf, and even married a Ju wasi woman.Like most people, I d heard about the Bushmen of the Kalahari as a boy, but really ha...This is the best report on a hunting gathering people I have ever seen first hand, comprehensive, detailed, with very convincing interpretations Not only it enlightens me about these bush people, but also on many animals The report follows up and summarizes their changing living conditions from stone to computer ages in about half a century It is based on the work of two generations of the author s family living with the tribe for most of their years during that time Now I have some fair im This is the best report on a hunting gathering people I have ever seen first hand, comprehensive, detailed, with very convincing interpretations Not only it enlightens me about these bush people, but also on many animals The report follows up and summarizes their changing living conditions from stone to com...I am curious about what makes us tick The genes that evolved on the African savannah are used to explain our behavior mating, agression, diet What would caveman do , I ask myself as I deal with the wild bunch that are my children I ve always suspected that the club wielding, meat chowin caricature was not quite right.The Old Way is an eyewitness account of what the savannah world was really like Ms Thomas was lucky to live with the last generation of Bushmen that lived the hunter gather I am curious about what makes us tick The genes that evolved on the African savannah are used to explain our behavior mating, agression, diet What would caveman do , I ask myself as I deal with the wild bunch that are my children I ve always suspected that the club wielding, meat chowin caricature was not quite right.The Old Way is an eyewitn...The Old Way, was a sad book because from the beginning one knows how it will end The same way it has ended for all such peoples that come in contact with the White Man s Way , whether from the desert or the rain forest, the South Sea tropics or the arctic I spent two years in the Canadian Arctic in the early 19...The Old Way describes a hunter gatherer s life from the most ancient of times until the very recent past.Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was indeed lucky person to live with one of the last remaining population of Bushman tribes called Ju wasi in Kalahari desert in 1950, truly palaeolithic people living in the ecological niche that most of our ancestors were occupying for hundreds of thousands years She calls it the Old Way and this book represents a fascinating account of their culture, hunter gatherer subsistence and wa...Fascinating but slow readThe Old Way is an excellent view of the world of the First People, how they lived for so many previous millennia, and what has happened to them in this one Sometimes beautifully written, always wonderfully observed, it yet suffers from repetition, and the unavoidable lack of a normal narrative line for most of the book These are people who survived by changing as little as possible, not constantly striving toward some far off goal in the way we come to expect in histor Fascinating but slow readThe Old Way is an excellent view of the world of the First People, how they lived for so many previous millennia, and what has happened to them in this one Sometimes beautifully written, always wonderfully observed, it yet suffers from repetition, and the unavoidable lack of a normal narrative line for most of the book These are people who survived by changing as little as possible, not constantly striving toward ...So interesting The writing is so so, and the sections of memoir weren t that interesting to me, but how life actually worked on the veld is fascinating and Thomas has such warmth.Excellent book about hunter gathers A culture and people lost for all time by the looks of things At times this is an especially sad book of the demise of a wonderful harmonious people.Very enlightening The ancestors of these people have been proven genetically to be the ancestors of all modern humans.

The Old Way
  • English
  • 09 March 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 368 pages
  • 0374225524
  • Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
  • The Old Way