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The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters In The Modern World (CBC Massey Lecture) (2009)

by Wade Davis(Favorite Author)

4.18 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0887847668 (ISBN13: 9780887847660)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

House of Anansi Press

review 1: That different people from different cultures experience the world in radically different ways is neither new nor controversial. Frequently, however, the conversation ends there, and we might not have a sense of what a totally Other worldview can actually look like. In The Wayfinders, anthropologist Wade Davis brings the reader along as he explores numerous peoples he has lived amongst and traveled within, from Polynesian navigators "pulling islands out of the sea" to Australian Aborigines walking the Songlines to the Elder Brothers of the Sierra Nevada holding all of the world together against the destruction caused by the rest of us. Drawing parallels to ecosystem and species conservation efforts, Davis shapes his narrative to emphasize the importance of cultural conserv... moreation among all the cultures of the world in the 21st century. As Western European and American "modernity" spreads, we must work to protect the legacy of human creativity and ingenuity found in other cultures as well, rather than letting them fade away. Modernity has brought much that is good and wonderful, but it does not and cannot address all the ills of the world, nor can it answer every question about the how and the why of life. Cultural diversity is as vital, Davis argues, to the survival of humanity as biodiversity is to ecosystem health. In brief, this book is really fun. Davis is an engaging writer/speaker (these essays are transcripts of a lecture series) and I came away in awe of the diversity of human experience and the dramatic differences in people's worldviews' underlying premises. It's not that such diversity is new to me in theory, but in its description, it is beautiful. Far and away, my most common marking in the book's margins was "wow."
review 2: With a few university evolutionary archaeology courses under my belt and an interest in cultures of the world that's led to a fair amount of anthropological reading, the first two chapters of this, while good, felt like a review of things I already knew. After that it got a bit more interesting as it covered ground I was unfamiliar or at least less familiar with. There were a few points that had me seeing things in a new way - like the suggestion that paleolithic cave art could be a nostalgia for the days before humans split off from animals into something new. less

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