The Time Traveller tells his dinner guests that he has travelled into tomorrow. Two Time Patrol agents agree that tomorrow they will cope. Turning the page from Everard's and Floris' conversation, we return to a time when people lived with the seasons:
"Winter brought rain, snow, rain again, flogged by harsh winds, weather that raged on into the springtime."
-"Star of the Sea," 3, p. 494.
Rain, snow and wind - Anderson readers have learned to notice the wind and indeed this one plays an active role!
Rivers gorge, meadows flood, swamps overflow, grain is doled, livestock huddles, shivers and is killed, hunting is resumed, the attitude of the gods is questioned, wind drives clouds, skirls and snarls, stars flicker, branches toss and creak, night is clear and cold, fire roars, flames leap, sparks whirl, light gleams, divine images loom, a boar roasts and so on. People live with nature.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It's more accurate to say that thru out most of human history people tried to cope with nature.
Ad astra! Sean
Living in northern Europe 'with nature' was... how shall we put it... a bit of a challenge.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's exactly one of the challenges humans had to cope with.
Ad astra! Sean
I don't recall at the moment who said that "Early humans didn't live in harmony with nature, they *died* in harmony with nature".
Jim; human hunters exterminated the Pleistocene megafauna -- the extinction at the end of the last Ice Age was vastly greater than any earlier interglacial episode.
Except in Africa, where the megafauna co-evolved with humans. There it took longer.
Human hunters will concentrate on large herbivores if they can, because it increases the effort/reward ratio.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Even animals as big and dangerous as woolly mammoths were preferred by hunters. Because of that "effort/reward ratio."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yes. And Neanderthals occasionally hunted cave lions -- 1000 lb. predators -- with wooden spears and clubs.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I admit to finding that a terrifying thought.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Well, I knew a man who killed a lion with a hunting knife after it jumped him.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But your acquaintance was not trying to hunt that lion, he had no choice but to fight for his life with whatever he had. It was very different from Neanderthals deliberately hunting 1000 lbs. lions armed only with a club or a fired hardened spear.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: you have a point. I'd guess that they were motivated by religion of some sort, and/or were trying to impress the girls.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha! Almost certainly the motivation for hunting those terrifying giant lions was either a religious/initiation rite or to impress the girls.
Ad astra! Sean
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