VOICE ONE:
This is Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program,EXPLORATIONS. Today we tell about scientist, explorer and writerWade Davis. He is working to try to save cultures throughout theworld that are in danger of disappearing.
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VOICE ONE:
Wade Davis has been exploring the mostly unknown areas of theworld for more than twenty-five years. He has traveled from themountains of Tibet to the deserts of North Africa, from the CanadianArctic to the rain forests of Borneo.
“Light at the Edge of the World”is his latest book. It is published by the National GeographicSociety, where he is an Explorer-in-Residence. The book includespictures Mister Davis has taken of these hidden places of the world,places which face many threats. The pictures are beautiful andunusual. Some of the images remain in your memory long after youclose the book.
One picture shows a guard leaning out a window in a bright orangewall of a Buddhist religious center in Tibet. In another, the yellowlight of the sun is just beginning to appear over the morning fog inthe forests of the Waorani people in Ecuador. Another picture showsa caribou walking along a huge expanse of white snow in BritishColumbia, Canada. In another, an Ariaal woman of Karare in Kenya,wearing many bright red necklaces, carries a large load of firewoodon her back.
VOICE TWO:
Other pictures show evidence of a disappearing way of life. Forexample, one picture is of fallen trees by a river that flowsthrough the forests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak. A largeyellow machine rests on the cleared land. A young woman tries towash in the now polluted river. It is evidence of what is happeningto the home of the Penan people in Borneo. They lived by hunting andgathering food as they moved through the forests.
However, Mister Davis says the Malaysian government is permittingcompanies to cut the trees on more than seventy percent of the Penanterritory. As a result, the traditional way of life of the Penan isgone. And all their history, which is part of the forest, is lost.
VOICE ONE:
In “Light at the Edge of the World,” Wade Davis writes about whatnative groups could teach about different ways of living andthinking. He describes their daily lives, and the threats to theirtraditional ways. He explains their strong relationship to the landthey live on, and the ceremonies that tie them to each other and tonature. For these groups, the land is alive. Mountains, rivers andforests are not just thought of as supports for human life.
Wade Davis’s hope is that through this book and other projects hecan help people understand the value of what he calls theethnosphere. He created the word ethnosphere, he says, because wordshave power. The word describes the total of all thoughts, beliefsand stories of the different cultures alive in the world today. Hewants to get people to see that there is a link of cultural,spiritual, intellectual and social life that goes around the planet.He says, “The ethnosphere represents all we are and all we havecreated as humans.”
VOICE TWO:
Mister Davis says the ethnosphere is being damaged more rapidlyand severely than the biosphere – the plants, animals and insects ofthe world. The sign of this, he says, is in the loss of languages.He explains it this way. Throughout all of human history, aboutten-thousand languages have existed. Today, about six-thousand arestill spoken. Yet half of these are not being taught to children,which means they will be lost as soon as the older speakers die.
Each language contains the history of a culture. It representsthe intellectual and spiritual knowledge that comes from ancestorsdown through the years. Languages express the belief systems,traditions and ways of understanding the world that are differentfor each group of people. Wade Davis says that each way of lookingat the world helps us all understand the complex human experience.
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VOICE ONE:
Wade Davis was born in British Columbia, in northwest Canada. Hehas degrees in anthropology — the study of humans, and botany –the study of plants. He received his doctorate in ethnobotany fromHarvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ethnobotony is thestudy of how plants are used in a culture.
One of the most important influences on his life was a professorat Harvard, Richard Schultes. He was known as the world’s leadingexpert on plants that are used as medicines and plants that affectthe mind.
Professor Schultes had left Harvard in the early Nineteen Fortiesto spend six months in South America along the Amazon River. Heended up spending twelve years there making maps of rivers. He livedwith more than twenty native groups. In that time, he collected morethan twenty-seven-thousand examples of plant life, includingtwo-thousand medicinal plants.
VOICE TWO:
Wade Davis was a student at Harvard when he met ProfessorSchultes in Nineteen-Seventy-Three. He told the professor that hetoo would like to go collect plants in the Amazon. Two weeks laterWade was on his way.
He spent fifteen months there during that first trip exploringthe Amazon River and Andes Mountains of South America. Through theyears, he lived with fifteen native groups in eight Latin Americancountries and collected six-thousand plants.
After his first trip to the Amazon area, he went to Haiti toinvestigate plant mixtures thought to create a zombie, a live personwho appears to be dead. He wrote about the experience in the book,”The Serpent and the Rainbow,” an international bestseller publishedin Nineteen-Eighty-Six.
VOICE ONE:
Wade Davis has spent years traveling in South America along theAndes Mountains and the Amazon River. His book, “One River,Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest,” tells abouthis experiences there.
He explored many other places, including Tibet, the Arctic andMalaysia. He has experienced daily life that is very different frommodern western life. He tells the story of how this way of life isdisappearing as forests are cut, rivers are polluted, and nativehomelands are seized.
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VOICE TWO:
Wade Davis says his worldwide travels have been driven by asimple desire for knowledge, for understanding how other peoplelive. But, he says, what also was pushing him into his explorationswas the need for excitement.
One of the pleasures of travel, he says, is the chance to liveamong those who have not lost the old ways, who still feel theirpast in the wind. He says he does not learn a lot about the natureof being alive from people who live in modern western ways. The joyof learning about what it means to be human comes from those wholive in other ways.
Mister Davis says he goes up into the Andes Mountains and spendsa month in a village where an older member of the group tells thefuture by throwing coca leaves. “I see his people use traditionalceremonies to re-establish their sense of belonging to the Earth. Itis here I see a window open wide to a place beyond my imaginings.”
VOICE ONE:
In his books and in public speeches, Wade Davis mourns the wayancient peoples throughout the world are being torn from their pastand pushed into the future. “Change is not the problem,” he says.”All through history, cultures have changed to meet the pressures ofmore modern times. We are not talking about how we stop history, orchange. The real question is how do we direct the flow of change soit does not do harm to living cultures.”
He says traditional cultures should be permitted to change attheir own speed and in their own ways. It is very possible, he says,to use both blowguns and computers. It should not be a choice ofeither one or the other.
For example, offering modern medicine to native groups should notmean the death of shamanism, the ancient method of healing. The twotraditions can support each other.
VOICE TWO:
Wade Davis points out that the physical destruction of groups ofpeople is condemned worldwide. But the destruction of ethnictraditions is considered in many places to be good policy. He thinksthat governments and individuals can be educated to realize this iswrong.
Wade Davis says that every culture that disappears reduces humanknowledge about the natural world, ways to react to common problems,and even the meaning of existence. In his book, “Light at the Edgeof the World,” and through National Geographic Society programs, hetells the stories of the many cultures of the world. He hopes to usehis explorations and storytelling about what he finds to try toawaken everyone to the wonder of the ethnosphere.
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VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written by Marilyn Christianoand produced by Caty Weaver. This is Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America.