Re: Re: Indigenous Knowledge article with Masai info

[Guest guest]

>

>

> > >

> > > But indigenous knowledge can be faulty. " Traditional people

> sometimes get

> > > things right, and sometimes get them wrong, " said Alan Fiske, a

> > > psychological anthropologist at the University of California at

> Los

> > Angeles.

> > > " Some things people do are bad for them. " Other anthropologists

> have

> > > challenged the notion that all indigenous groups have somehow

> developed a

> > > blissful oneness with their world.

>

> Curious that they didn't go into any details on HOW ANCIENT the

> faulty knowledge might be, nor did they give ANY examples of FAULTY

> indigenous knowledge--do you suppose they don't have any?

>

> I love the part where they reason away the Masai high-fat diet by

> only focusing on the inclusion of anti-oxidant food stuffs.

>

> Danelle in Kansas

LOL...got a snicker out of that too as I've been told a few times by a few

people that historic blissful oneness with the world can only be my fantasy.

Agree every choice may not have been the perfect choice. Today's perceptions

and provings of indigenous knowledge right or wrong does include what's

known by science now as the article noted. It does not include the

perceptions and thinking processes specific to any group. The group's

individual culture and environment determine that and what's right-wrong for

the group. The only example I can think of is the Blackfeet tribe running

buffalo herds off cliffs. Some see it as totally wasteful as all the meat

was not used. If the purpose was lack of arrows, hide for tipis, clothing or

winter fat was needed instead then it wasn't wasteful, it was a common sense

knowledgable adaptation to that environment. Kept the predatory animals

likely to come to the village for food eating for a while too. Focusing

without indigenous knowledge's or human instinct's inclusion of the entire

workings can only make a fault equal to the fault of human exclusion that

found it.

Wanita

[Guest guest]

How about the natives of Easter Island destroying all the trees on

their island without taking time to replace them? It pretty much

destroyed the islands. It was, I believe, the result of religious edicts.

Geoffrey Tolle

Wanita Sears wrote:

> > Curious that they didn't go into any details on HOW ANCIENT the

> > faulty knowledge might be, nor did they give ANY examples of FAULTY

> > indigenous knowledge--do you suppose they don't have any?

[Guest guest]

> How about the natives of Easter Island destroying all the trees on

>their island without taking time to replace them? It pretty much

>destroyed the islands. It was, I believe, the result of religious edicts.

>

> Geoffrey Tolle

Some archeologists believe the arrival of humans on Australia was what

wiped out the giant kangaroos and other giant fauna ... probably not

through hunting, but because large swaths of land were burnt. On

purpose or accidentally? No one knows ... the American Indians

set fires to encourage more deer to roam, which actually seemed

to work ok and probably made the forests more healthy ... the

West Coast ecosystem designed for occasional fires. But Australia's

I guess was not.

Heidi Jean

[Guest guest]

>>>Some archeologists believe the arrival of humans on Australia was what

wiped out the giant kangaroos and other giant fauna ... probably not

through hunting, but because large swaths of land were burnt. On

purpose or accidentally? No one knows ... the American Indians

set fires to encourage more deer to roam, which actually seemed

to work ok and probably made the forests more healthy ... the

West Coast ecosystem designed for occasional fires. But Australia's

I guess was not.<<<

Heidi,

The Australian Aborigines did not burn 'large swaths of land'. They managed the

land and 'made the forests more healthy' as you said about the American Indians.

It was the white people in the last 200 or so years that cleared 'large swaths

of land'. The Aborigines would not decimate their livelihood like that.

http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/aboriginal-trail.html

The Aborigines have lived in Australia for at least 40,000 years, and in all

those long generations the land provided them with everything they needed for a

healthy life. They also learned to manage their country in such ways that its

resources renewed themselves and were not used up.

How did they do this? To quote Curr, an early settler, they 'tilled their

ground and cultivated their pastures with fire'. By controlled burning, they

kept the bush open and allowed the growth of new seedlings in the ash-bed.

Aborigines in Arnhem Land still do this. Many Australian plants will re-grow

quickly after a fire; indeed some plants such as the grass-tree (Xanthorrhoea

spp.) flower more prolifically after fire.

http://www.waite.adelaide.edu.au/school/Habitat/indigens.html

Aboriginal people maintain their bush tucker supplies by habitat management. In

the spinifex deserts of central Australia, burning promotes a diversity of

plants, including bush tomatoes, and other useful plants for food and medicine.

Burning different patches of land over a number of years creates a checkerboard

of different habitats. Grazing animals always have fresh green grass to eat in

areas that have been recently burnt. Other areas that have not been burnt

provide animals with better shelter from predators. Without burning, vegetation

in the spinifex deserts becomes dominated by old clumps of spinifex grass, a

dry, prickly habitat, which offers relatively little food for animals or people.

Aboriginal habitat management today

Australia's habitats have changed enormously in the last 200 years. The country

will never again be like it was 200 years ago. Even in the remotest parts of

Australia, where many Aboriginal people live on their traditional land, a dozen

or more native mammal species have gone extinct, destructive feral animals are

abundant and Aboriginal people live in settlements or towns. Very few Aboriginal

people live in close contact with the habitats of their traditional lands.

Many Aboriginal people are now working to rebuild their close relationship with

the habitats of their traditional lands. This work of " caring for country " is an

important part of keeping Aboriginal culture strong and keeping natural habitats

healthy.

Over the past 25 years, some Aboriginal people have moved back to their

traditional lands, making small communities called outstations or homelands for

themselves and their families. There are now over a thousand Aboriginal

homelands in remote parts of Australia, most of them in the Northern Territory.

Moving back to their traditional land has made it easier for Aboriginal people

to eat healthy bush foods, manage habitats by burning, and teach their kids

about " caring for country " .

Cheers,

Tas'.

[Guest guest]

>Heidi,

>

>The Australian Aborigines did not burn 'large swaths of land'. They managed the

land and 'made the forests more healthy' as you said about the American Indians.

It was the white people in the last 200 or so years that cleared 'large swaths

of land'. The Aborigines would not decimate their livelihood like that.

If it's a debate between whether the Aborigines or the white folks do more

damage, the white folks win, hands down! But there is the question of

why the megafauna disappeared when the aborigines appeared. It may

be that the ancestors of today's aborigines were quite different ... maybe they

learned the error of their ways. Or maybe the timing is coincidental. A similar

controversy surrounds the dissappearance of mammoths in North America shortly

after people arrived. It is pretty certain people hunted them ... but whether or

not

that led to their demise is unknown.

Anyway, a humbling fact is that we are talking 40,000 PLUS years ago. These

folks lived in more or less harmony with their environment for tens of thousands

of years. When the white folks came, 200 years years later we've decimated

hundreds of species and totally revamped the landscape and developed technology

that can wipe us ALL out.

FWIW, I don't think some species ... like giant lions and grizzly bears ... can

coexist

well with humans. Living in an area with mountain lions ... who are not as

aggressive

as tigers but nevertheless will eat children ... I have to admit that if it is

my kid

or the lion, the lion goes! Also, megafauna was on it's way out for a long time

before people arrived. I'm not taking a stance on this ... like I said, it's a

controversy,

but the question was was sorts of things might previous peoples NOT have done

right.

-- Heidi JEan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aborigine

The Aboriginal people lived through many climatic changes and adapted

successfully to the different environments. There is much debate about the

degree to which Aboriginal people modified their environment. One controversy

revolves around the role of Aborigines in the extinction of the

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Marsupial>marsupial

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Megafauna>megafauna. Some argue that natural

climate change killed the megafauna. Others claim that, because the megafauna

were large and slow, they were easy prey for Aboriginal hunters. A third

possibility is that Aboriginal modification of the environment indirectly led to

their extinction.

Aboriginal modification of the environment, particularly through the use of

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Fire>fire, is also controversial. It is well

known that Aborigines used fire for a variety of purposes -- to encourage the

growth of edible plants and fodder for prey, to reduce the risk of catastrophic

wildfires, to make travel easier, to eliminate pests, for ceremonial purposes,

and just to " clean up country. " There is disagreement, however, about the extent

to which Aboriginal burning led to large-scale changes in vegetation patterns.

Despite their reputation as stone-age relics, there is evidence of substantial

change in Aboriginal culture over time.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Rock_painting>Rock painting at several

locations in northern Australia has been shown to consist of a sequence of

different styles linked to different historical periods.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//w/wiki.phtml?title=Harry_Lourandos & action=edit>Ha\

rry Lourandos has been the leading proponent of the theory that a period of

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//w/wiki.phtml?title=Hunter-gatherer_intensificatio\

n & action=edit>hunter-gatherer intensification occurred between 5000 and 3000 BP.

Intensification involved an increase in human manipulation of the environment

(for example, the construction of fish traps in

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/_%28Australia%29>),

population growth, an increase in trade between groups, a more elaborate social

structure, and other cultural changes. A shift in

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Stone_tool>stone tool technology, involving

the development of smaller and more intricate points and scrapers, occurred

around this time.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994028

Big beast extinction blamed on prehistoric fire starters

Prehistoric fire starters may have unwittingly killed off the big beasts that

once roamed Australia. Analysis of ancient eggshells suggests that the animals

suddenly became extinct about 50,000 years ago because people burned up their

habitat.

Australia's giant carnivorous kangaroos, seven-metre-long lizards, marsupial

lions and enormous flightless birds all died off between 45,000 and 55,000 years

ago. Most scientists agree that people arrived in Australia somewhere between

50,000 and 55,000 years ago.

This suspicious coincidence of timing has led some to conclude that overzealous

hunting by humans caused the extinctions. But others claim that we could not

have cleared the entire continent of so many species in such a short time.

Geologist Gifford of the University of Colorado at Boulder and an

international team analysed hundreds of eggshell fragments of an extinct

flightless bird called Genyornis, dating from 130,000 to 50,000 years ago. They

compared them with the eggshells of emus, dating from 130,000 years ago to the

present day.

Carbon isotopes in the eggshells reveal what the birds were eating when they

laid the eggs. The team found that emus consumed either grasses, shrubs and

trees, or a mixture, until 50,000 years ago, when grasses all but disappeared

from their diet.

But Genyornis ate a narrow diet that always included grass - and then died out,

told an International Union for Quaternary Research meeting in Reno,

Nevada, last week.

Climate change is too slow to have killed off most of the grasses, argues

. The best explanation is that people began burning the landscape.

Bert of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, says

that giant marsupials became extinct around the same time, and the reason could

be that burning affected the entire ecosystem.

----------

Heidi Jean

[Guest guest]

>When the white folks came, 200 years years later we've decimated

> hundreds of species and totally revamped the landscape and developed

> technology

> that can wipe us ALL out.

Do you suppose being white has something to do with it? Or is it just that

whites happen to be a dominating race during this particular time in

history? I always wonder, given the state of the world, if white people are

somehow morally flawed or spiritually bereft or more lacking in common

sense. Something to do with diet history or genetics (gluten is the cause no

doubt, LOL). I can ask this bc i'm white!

Elaine

[Guest guest]

> Re: Re: Indigenous Knowledge article with Masai info

>

>

>

>>When the white folks came, 200 years years later we've decimated

>> hundreds of species and totally revamped the landscape and developed

>> technology

>> that can wipe us ALL out.

>

>Do you suppose being white has something to do with it? Or is it just that

>whites happen to be a dominating race during this particular time in

>history? I always wonder, given the state of the world, if white people are

>somehow morally flawed or spiritually bereft or more lacking in common

>sense. Something to do with diet history or genetics (gluten is

>the cause no

>doubt, LOL). I can ask this bc i'm white!

>Elaine

Elaine,

Weston Price answered this question quite clearly in " Nutrition and Phsyical

Degeneration " . Whites in industrialized nations have been living on

processed foods for many generations. Price presents evidence that the

displacement of native foods with these processed foods leads to physical,

mental and moral degeneration. If you haven't already read his book, I can't

recommend it highly enough.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

" The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------

>

[Guest guest]

Better example that slipped my mind. Is odd and opposing to the cultural

self preservation that enabled others to flourish for thousands of years.

Religious edicts that don't recognize human's existence from environment and

hierarchial negligence of people and/or environment is how all extinct

cultures self destructed. Have never heard wheather the Easter Island

natives are thought to be a distinct, small group or a part of another group

that split off. Either way, in the former group they may not have had the

experience or knowledge of island living with it's limited resources. In the

latter, splitting off could have been with a determination to create a new

way to live that left behind as well important self preserving indigenous

knowledge.

Wanita

> How about the natives of Easter Island destroying all the trees on

> their island without taking time to replace them? It pretty much

> destroyed the islands. It was, I believe, the result of religious edicts.

>

> Geoffrey Tolle

>

> Wanita Sears wrote:

>

> > > Curious that they didn't go into any details on HOW ANCIENT the

> > > faulty knowledge might be, nor did they give ANY examples of FAULTY

> > > indigenous knowledge--do you suppose they don't have any?

[Guest guest]

>Do you suppose being white has something to do with it? Or is it just that

>whites happen to be a dominating race during this particular time in

>history? I always wonder, given the state of the world, if white people are

>somehow morally flawed or spiritually bereft or more lacking in common

>sense. Something to do with diet history or genetics (gluten is the cause no

>doubt, LOL). I can ask this bc i'm white!

>Elaine

Yeah, and I can rant because I'm white too! Well, as many folks

have already heard in my ranting, my theory is that white

folks have a really high percentage of Asperger folks. Asperger's

is a mental condition where part of the " social " brain gets knocked

out. It can be replicated by knocking out the social brain with magnets.

Asperger folks however are EXTRA GOOD at math, science, and programming.

Basically most of our great technical strides in history have been

carried out by Aspies, who are excellent at having good focus

on one subject. Aspies abound in the technical field, and Temple

Grandin, a famous one, called NASA " the world's largest sheltered

workshop " . Asperger's is part of the autistic spectrum, but most

Aspies are successful, if quirky. DaVinci, Newton, and Einstein are

good examples.

Now ... what causes Asperger's? Seems to be ... drumroll ... *WHEAT*.

Or more specifically, and IgA allergy to it. If you have the wrong

genes and eat wheat, you may end up with Asperger's (lack of

breastfeeding might help here). So if you look at history, civilization

began in the Fertile Crescent, and so did the first technical strides.

But the HLA genes that cause IgA intolerance died out there ...

and so did the technical strides. But wheat moved up to Europe ...

right about the time Europeans started their own technical revolution.

Since this intolerance ALSO causes schizophrenia and depression

etc. you also get a lot of crazy kings and queens around this time,

who get better weapons by all these smart Aspie techno-nerds,

who also have very little social brain and so lack empathy with

their fellow human beings.

Anyway, now wheat-eating is being exported to new countries

that didn't eat it before, like Japan and Korea, and they are

getting a lot of new diseases they didn't get before, and

autism/asperger's is on the rise all over the world, it's being

called an epidemic.

So yeah, I actually DO think gluten is a basic cause of much of

the misery in the world. I'm not the only one, some of the

researchers think the same thing, though it does sound

simplistic! Prices observation that " moral character " decayed

when people ate " white flour and sugar " was probably correct.

Gluten intolerance also causes zinc deficiency and other

nutritional problems ... said nutritional problems will cause

mental problems too with or without the gluten, plus phytates

also cause nutritional problems.

Heidi Jean

[Guest guest]

Thanks Suze, i lent it to my dentist before reading it! But it seems all the

trouble started before industrialization, didn't it?

Elaine

> Weston Price answered this question quite clearly in " Nutrition and Phsyical

> Degeneration " . Whites in industrialized nations have been living on

> processed foods for many generations. Price presents evidence that the

> displacement of native foods with these processed foods leads to physical,

> mental and moral degeneration. If you haven't already read his book, I can't

> recommend it highly enough.

[Guest guest]

Come to think of it, the advent of man into North America also

heralded the extinction of the mammoth, the giant sloth, the camel, and

nearly all other large mammals. Over-hunting combined with climate

change are the two big factors considered most likely. The slash and

burning, though, is an intriguing contribution. However, I am unfamiliar

with how much slash and burn was done by the Clovis peoples and earlier.

Geoffrey Tolle

Heidi Schuppenhauer wrote:

> Some archeologists believe the arrival of humans on Australia was what

> wiped out the giant kangaroos and other giant fauna ... probably not

> through hunting, but because large swaths of land were burnt. On

> purpose or accidentally? No one knows ... the American Indians

> set fires to encourage more deer to roam, which actually seemed

> to work ok and probably made the forests more healthy ... the

> West Coast ecosystem designed for occasional fires. But Australia's

> I guess was not.

>

>

> Heidi Jean

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

While I have suspected that northern Caucasians might be somewhat

more pre-disposed towards chaos (there are fewer long-lived dominent

cultures in Europe than elsewhere - then again, maybe it's the weather)

I don't believe that they are any more morally bankrupt or spiritually

deficient than any other racial grouping. Let's be honest, many

extremely stable cultures have existed throughout history and the world

that were both highly religious and extremely brutal in maintaining

their control of their nations. I think that European cultures may

simply have been the first to really focus in on the irreproducability

of history rather than its cyclic nature and have not, yet, adjusted to

a new way of perceiving life and the future.

Geoffrey Tolle

Elaine wrote:

> Do you suppose being white has something to do with it? Or is it just that

> whites happen to be a dominating race during this particular time in

> history? I always wonder, given the state of the world, if white

> people are

> somehow morally flawed or spiritually bereft or more lacking in common

> sense. Something to do with diet history or genetics (gluten is the

> cause no

> doubt, LOL). I can ask this bc i'm white!

> Elaine

[Guest guest]

> Re: Re: Indigenous Knowledge article with Masai info

>

>

>Thanks Suze, i lent it to my dentist before reading it! But it

>seems all the

>trouble started before industrialization, didn't it?

>Elaine

Not if the Outer Hebrides Islanders and Swiss villagers Price studied are an

example of the phsyical, mental and moral health of whites in the aggregate,

on a healthy diet.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

" The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------

>

[Guest guest]

> Re: Re: Indigenous Knowledge article with Masai info

>>

>>

>>Thanks Suze, i lent it to my dentist before reading it! But it

>>seems all the

>>trouble started before industrialization, didn't it?

>>Elaine

>

>Not if the Outer Hebrides Islanders and Swiss villagers Price

>studied are an

>example of the phsyical, mental and moral health of whites in the

>aggregate,

>on a healthy diet.

>

BTW, I should add, that industrialization meant a concentration of poor diet

among industrialized peoples, so the degeneration of mind, body and soul

probably became widespread as a result of industrialization. BUT the

degeneration of physical, mental and moral health would've started with the

displacement of healthy indigenous diets with these " foods of modern

commerce " wherever this occurred prior to industrialization.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

" The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------

[Guest guest]

>> Thanks Suze, i lent it to my dentist before reading it! But it seems

>> all the

>> trouble started before industrialization, didn't it?

>> Elaine

>

>Yep. Which is why I think it's a combination of gluten *and* lack of

>vitamin D in some cases.

>

>~

And probably lack of breastfeeding, and white flour is worse than

whole wheat flour. The problems started in Egyptian times though ...

the main culprit is genetic plus humans can't digest grains well.

Heidi Jean