This TEDTalks video about the Amazon Rainforest and it’s most endangered inhabitants is both heartwarming and heart breaking. Mark Plotkin is an ethnobotanist working to preserve the biodiversity and indigenous knowledge of the most precious remaining regions of the Amazon. The last few remaining uncontacted tribes of truly wild humans need to to be protected and allowed to continue their traditional way of life on their native lands. They are literally going extinct.
It makes me feel sad that humanity is discarding it’s origins as people who lived in complete harmony with the Earth and had an intimate connection to it, a deep ancestral knowledge of their local plants and animals, food, medicine, tool making, navigation, and building. We didn’t just survive…we learned how to thrive.
I’m sure it wasn’t easy…but neither is modern life. I believe that our modern lives are much more difficult in fact. Our relentless quest for power, wealth, and accomplishment actually harms us, and our planet in so many ways. We have so much to learn from these people, despite their seemingly primitive way of life and lack of participation in the modern world. It would be a shame if we lose them forever, and their way of life is forgotten.
Watch this video and leave a comment to let me know your thoughts and feelings about this important moment in human history. Can humanity preserve it’s original way of life even if only in small isolated pockets of untainted wilderness?
