The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
This will be one of the most important books of the millennium. -Sy Montgomery, The Good Good Pig One of our most influential anthropologists reevaluates her long and illustrious career by returning to her roots and the roots of life as we know it. When Elizabeth Marshall Thomas first arrived in Africa to live among the Kalahari San, or bushmen, it was 1950, she was nineteen years old, and these last surviving hunter gatherers were living as humans had lived for 15,000 centuries. Thomas wound up writing about their world in a seminal work, The Harmless People (1959). It has never gone out of print. Back then, this was uncharted territory and little was known about our human origins. Today, our beginnings are better understood. And after a lifetime of interest in the bushmen, Thomas has come to see that their lifestyle reveals great, hidden truths about human evolution. In The Old Way, Marshall 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 over time, Thomas vividly brings us to see how linked we are to our origins in the animal kingdom. The Old Way is a rare and remarkable achievement, sure to stir up controversy, and worthy of celebration. A deeply felt, deeply observed masterpiece that transforms the way we look at our own world. -Sarah Blaffer Hardy
Between 1950 and 1956 Elizabeth Marshall Thomas accompanied three expeditions to visit the Bushmen hunter-gatherers of Southwest Africa (now Namibia) and Bechuanaland (now Botswana). At that time the Bushmen were the last significant population who still lived by hunting and gathering, the economy practiced by all human beings and the ancestors of human beings for millions of years. Few firsthand accounts of hunter-gatherer life were written before her book The Harmless People, and because, since its publication, most Bushmen have been evicted from their old homes or forced to change their traditional ways, it remains one of only a few accounts of the old way of life. Thomas, who has spent the last 20 years studying animal behavior, makes her home in New Hampshire. Her other writing includes a nonfiction book about Dodoth pastoralists in northern Uganda, Warrior Herdsmen, and a novel about prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the Northern Hemisphere, Reindeer Moon.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780374225520 |
| ISBN 10 | 0374225524 |
| Title | The Old Way |
| Author | Elizabeth Marshall Thomas |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc |
| Year published | 2006-10-17 |
| Number of pages | 343 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |