The fox skin becomes impregnated with the dust, which prepares it for the polishing stage (Does it have to be fox skin?). Then, using a pre-heated and grooved stone, the shaft is pressed into the grooves and rubbed back and forth, pressing it down with a piece of fox skin. – The wood is heated, straightened with the craftsman’s teeth, and eventually finished with a scraper. Though strong and light, this wood is a non-intuitive choice since the gnarled branches require extensive straightening (why not start with straighter branches?). – The process begins by selecting the wood for the shaft, which preferably comes from chaura, a bushy, evergreen shrub. Here’s how the Indians of Tierra del Fuego make arrows:Īmong the Fuegians, making an arrow requires a 14-step procedure that involves using seven different tools to work six different materials. And although the Arctic is an unusually hostile place for humans, Henrich makes it clear that hunting-gathering techniques of this level of complexity are standard everywhere. No surprise that stranded explorers couldn’t figure all this out. To melt it, make sure you have enough oil for your soapstone lamp. Of course, you need to be able to locate and identify old sea ice by color and texture. However, old sea ice has lost most of its salt, so it can be melted to make potable water. The pack ice is frozen salt water, so using it for drinking will just make you dehydrate faster. To have a reliable fire, you’ll need to carve a lamp from soapstone (you know what soapstone looks like, right?), render some oil for the lamp from blubber, and make a wick out of a particular species of moss. However, there are no trees at this latitude for wood, and driftwood is too sparse and valuable to use routinely for fires. Now you have a seal, but you have to cook it. Once you’ve plunged your harpoon’s head into the seal, you’re then in a wrestling match as you reel him in, onto the ice, where you can finish him off with the aforementioned bear-bone spike. The rear spike of the harpoon is made of extra-hard polar bear bone (yes, you also need to know how to kill polar bears best to catch them napping in their dens). You can get the antler from the previously noted caribou, which you brought down with your driftwood bow. Your harpoon should be about 1.5 meters (5ft) long, with a detachable tip that is tethered with a heavy braid of sinew line. If the seal enters the hole, the indicator moves, and you must blindly plunge your harpoon into the hole using all your weight. The hole is then covered with snow, save for a small gap at the top that is capped with a down indicator. You then open the hole, smell it to verify it’s still in use (what do seals smell like?), and then assess the shape of the hole using a special curved piece of caribou antler. It’s important that the area around the hole be snow-covered-otherwise the seals will hear you and vanish. You first have to find their breathing holes in the ice. Here’s Henrich’s description of how the Inuit hunt seals: Hunting and gathering is actually really hard. But despite their big brains, when faced with the task our big brains supposedly evolved for – figuring out how to do hunting and gathering in a wilderness environment – they failed pathetically. Most of them had some past experience with wilderness craft and survival. Many of them were from Victorian Britain, one of the most successful civilizations in history, full of geniuses like Darwin and Galton. They were often selected for their education and intelligence. For one thing, their exploration parties were made up entirely of strong young men in their prime, with no need to support women, children, or the elderly. These explorers had many advantages over our hominid ancestors. One particularly unfortunate group was in Alabama, and would have perished entirely if they hadn’t been captured and enslaved by local Indians first. Others were in jungles, surrounded by edible plants and animals. Some of them were in Arctic lands that the Inuit considered among their richest hunting grounds. They starved to death in the middle of endless plenty. These explorers usually starved to death. Henrich walks the reader through many stories about European explorers marooned in unfamiliar environments. In this view, we are smart enough to invent neat tools that help us survive and adapt to unfamiliar environments.Īgainst such theories: we cannot actually do this. Henrich wants to debunk (or at least clarify) a popular view where humans succeeded because of our raw intelligence. The Secret Of Our Success by anthropologist Joseph Henrich manages to be an amazing book anyway. “Culture is the secret of humanity’s success” sounds like the most vapid possible thesis.
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