The Old Way
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The New York Times–bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Dogs delivers a “heartbreaking and gorgeously observed” account of our hunter-gatherer origins (The New York Times Book Review).
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was nineteen when her father took her and her family to live among the Bushmen of the Kalahari. She later wrote about their world in her classic work, The Harmless People. Now, after fifty years, Thomas returns to her experiences with the Bushmen, one of the last hunter-gatherer societies on earth, and discovers among them an essential link to the origins of all human society.
Humans lived for 1,500 centuries as roving clans, adapting daily to changes in environment and food supply, living for the most part like their animal ancestors. Those origins are not so easily abandoned, Thomas suggests, and our modern society has plenty still to learn from the Bushmen.
In The Old Way, Thomas shows how the skills and customs of the hunter-gatherer share much in common with the survival tactics of our animal predecessors. And since it is “knowledge, not objects, that endure”, Thomas vividly demonstrates how linked we are to our origins in the animal kingdom.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was nineteen when her father took her and her family to live among the Bushmen of the Kalahari. She later wrote about their world in her classic work, The Harmless People. Now, after fifty years, Thomas returns to her experiences with the Bushmen, one of the last hunter-gatherer societies on earth, and discovers among them an essential link to the origins of all human society.
Humans lived for 1,500 centuries as roving clans, adapting daily to changes in environment and food supply, living for the most part like their animal ancestors. Those origins are not so easily abandoned, Thomas suggests, and our modern society has plenty still to learn from the Bushmen.
In The Old Way, Thomas shows how the skills and customs of the hunter-gatherer share much in common with the survival tactics of our animal predecessors. And since it is “knowledge, not objects, that endure”, Thomas vividly demonstrates how linked we are to our origins in the animal kingdom.
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