EDITOR'S COMMENT:
I've been working my way through the new video clips that have been posted on TED <
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/>.
While they are all good, here's one from a 2003 talk given by Wade
Davis that deserves special attention. Along with the introduction that
TED provides, I have also included a 2003 National Geographic article
that provides more background information.
--- David Sunfellow
.............
WADE DAVIS AT TED
In this stunning talk, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade
Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world's indigenous
cultures, many of which are disappearing, as ancestral land is lost and
languages die. (50 percent of the world's 6000 languages are no longer
taught to children.) Against a backdrop of extraordinary photos and
stories that ignite the imagination, Davis argues that we should be
concerned not only for preserving the biosphere, but also the
"ethnosphere," which he describes as "the sum total of all thoughts and
dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by
the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness." An
anthropologist and botanist by training, Davis has traveled the world,
living among indigenous cultures. He's written several books, including
The Serpent and the Rainbow and Light at the Edge of the World.
(Recorded February 2003 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 22:44)
Watch Online
Download Video
Download Audio
.............
EXPLORER ON INITIATIVE TO DOCUMENT CULTURES ON THE EDGE
By Wade Davis
National Geographic News
May 22, 2003
Original Link
Author, anthropologist, and botanical explorer Wade Davis is a National
Geographic Society explorer-in-residence. Together with National
Geographic Cultures Initiative photographer Chris Rainier, Davis
recently embarked on the first of a series of expeditions over the next
five years to study the web of cultural diversity around the Earth.
In the essay below, Davis describes the National Geographic Cultures Initiative and its vital mission.
............
One of the intense pleasures of travel is the opportunity to live among
peoples who have not forgotten the old ways, who feel their past in the
wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, taste it in the bitter
leaves of plants. Just to know that Jaguar shamans still journey beyond
the Milky Way, that the myths of the Inuit elders still resonate with
meaning, that the Tibetan pilgrim still pursues the breath of the
Buddha, is to remember the central revelation of anthropology, and that
is the realization that our particular cultural world does not exist in
some absolute sense, but rather is simply one model of reality; the
consequence of one set of adaptive choices that our particular
intellectual and spiritual lineage made, albeit successfully, many
generations ago. The Penan in the forests of Borneo, the Vodoun
acolytes in Haiti, the Tuareg nomads in the searing sands of the Sahara
-- all these peoples reveal that there are other options, other means
of interpreting existence, other ways of being. This is an idea that
can only inspire hope.
Together the myriad cultures of the world make up an intellectual and
spiritual web of life, an "ethnosphere" if you will, that envelops and
insulates the planet. You might think of the ethnosphere as the sum
total of all thoughts, beliefs, myths, and intuitions brought into
being by the human imagination since the dawn of conciousness. The
ethnosphere is humanity's greatest legacy. It is the product of our
dreams, the embodiment of our hopes, the symbol of all that we are and
all that we have created as a wildly inquisitive and astonishingly
adaptive species.
Just as the biosphere, the biological matrix of life, is today being
severely compromised, so too is the ethnosphere. And at a far greater
rate of loss. No biologist, for example, would dare suggest that 50
percent of all species are moribund or on the brink of extinction. Yet
this, the most apocalyptic projection in the realm of biological
diversity, scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic
scenario in the realm of cultural diversity. The key indicator is
language loss. There are at present, roughly spoken, 6,000 languages. A
language, of course, is not merely a body of vocabulary or a set of
grammatical rules. It is a flash of the human spirit, the means by
which the soul of each particular culture reaches into the material
world. Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed
of thought, an entire ecosystem of spiritual possibilities. Of those
6,000 extant languages, fully half are not being taught to children.
Unless something changes, effectively they are already dead. What could
be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your
people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the
wisdom of the elders, to anticipate the promise of the children. This
tragic fate is indeed the plight of someone somewhere roughly every two
weeks. For on average every fortnight a leader dies and carries with
him or her into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue. What
this really means is that within a generation or two, we are witnessing
the loss of fully half of humanity's legacy. This is the hidden
backdrop of our age.
The ultimate tragedy is not that archaic societies are disappearing but
rather that vibrant, dynamic, living cultures and languages are being
forced out of existence. At risk is a vast archive of knowledge and
expertise, a catalogue of the imagination, an oral and written
literature composed of the memories of countless elders and healers,
warriors, farmers, fishermen, midwives, poets and saints. In short, the
artistic, intellectual, and spiritual expression of the full complexity
and diversity of the human experience. Every view of the world that
fades away, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of
life and reduces the human repertoire of adaptive responses to the
common problems that confront us all. Knowledge is lost, not only of
the natural world but of realms of the spirit, intuitions about the
meaning of the cosmos, insights into the very nature of existence.
Our goal at the National Geographic Cultures Initiative is to focus
global attention on the plight of the ethnosphere. To do so, we will be
launching a series of journeys that will take our readers and viewers
to places where the cultural beliefs, practices, and adaptations are so
inherently wondrous that one cannot help but come away dazzled by the
full range of the human imagination.
Above all, we hope to encourage our audience to understand that these
cultures do not represent failed attempts at modernity, marginal
peoples who somehow missed the technological train to the future. On
the contrary, these peoples, with their dreams and prayers, their myths
and memories, teach us that there are indeed other ways of being,
alternative visions of life, birth, death, and creation itself. When
asked the meaning of being human, they respond with ten thousand
different voices. It is within this diversity of knowledge and
practice, of intuition and interpretation, of promise and hope, that we
will all rediscover the enchantment of being what we are, a conscious
species aware of our place on the planet, and fully capable not only of
doing no harm but of ensuring that all peoples in every garden find a
way to flourish.
Our first stop in this long journey will be Mali, and the dunes of the Sahara. We'll report from there...