Many vital communities are called “hunter-gatherer” communities. That is not it at all! They are often societies of gift and acceptance and re-gifting. Water and stone sculpt wood. The resulting shapes reveal potentialities of form. It’s easy enough to make a technology out of bone, but it’s even easier to work wood. You don’t have to hunt it.
Once you’ve seen the shape, you’re on your way to re-create or extend its shapes at any time, using stone, fire and any wood you can find. Wood is an enormous technological advance over stone-age bone, because it unites community strength and individual prowess in an open-ended way that still has not been exhausted. We are all the children of wood, and finds like the strand line above. The sea actually lays them at our feet!
Categories: First Peoples, Industry, Nature Photography
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