This is always a cool topic, and is kind of philosophical vs. practical discussion.
My take is no one can really “go primitive” no matter even if you go off into the woods naked and depend on your skills to survive, or make a bow using only stone tools. All of us are trapped in our modern world, and are products of our education, society, mass media, the foods we eat, the preservatives in the food, the way we get to our job and around, the infrastructure like roads and electricity and GPS satellites, metals, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, our system of law and order, and our religions. Even if you play primitive and try to replicate the conditions of our ancestors of 10,000 years ago, we are only playing, and seeing mere shadows of what was.
I was at my club in Deerfield felling an elm tree a few weeks ago, and it was around dusk when I was heading out with a 4” log perched over my shoulder. It was that weird time of day when the beautiful forest suddenly started becoming less than inviting, and I think most of you know what I am talking about. The light started failing, the ground fog started rising among the birch and elm tress, the sounds of the forest changed, and it felt a bit like I was in an ancient fairy tale, and not the happy kind that ends “they all lived happily ever after”. Times like that tell me that as much as I love the forest, I am not and will never truly be part of that kind of nature, but only a visitor. We are part of the world of automobiles, space exploration, TV and video, electricity, air conditioning, tools, fast food, books, and so on.
Struggling back to the car with this green trunk, I also thought about how easy we have it today, and how hard just cutting down a small tree and getting it home is. Imagine a world without metal, for instance. And think about how that metal is mined and then manufactured into common stuff like bolts and nails, how it is transported to factories, how the energy is produced to run the factories and the supply chain, and how it gets packaged and in stores and finally to us. And think about how you work and earn the money to get these things. Our ancestors would be totally amazed, and most of us don’t really understand how all of it works, too. It is nearly infinitely complex, and getting more so all the time.
It kind of reminds me of a discussion I had a few years ago with a historian from the U. of Akron about a WWII book project I am working on. Some WWII B-26 pilots and crew were looking into having some B-26 Marauders replicated and built. Only 1 B-26 exists in flying condition in the entire world, and the plan was to get a few build and licensed. It was possible to do this, but it would have cost them about $3 million a copy, but that money and those replica bombers would never do what the old guys really wanted. They had an idea that they could go back in time and relive some aspects of their WWII flying experience, but that is just not possible. While each single component of the planes could be replicated, the safety of flying through blue US skies instead of clouds of dark German flak, the radio net not broadcasting a tactical net out of England but modern air traffic, the age of the guys, all the rest would only allow them to get a feel for what they once did, but not really replicate that experience. That is impossible, just as someone participating in a WWII or Civil War battle reenactment can never really put themselves in a battle like Gettysburg or the Bulge or D Day. The Germans aren’t shooting back, blanks are in the muskets and the MP40s, and so on. Your odds of dying or getting your legs blow off are pretty much 0%. The fear will never be there, or the society that you would have come out of to have actually participated.
And that is the same as a stone age bow. You can touch on what an ancestor may have experienced, but only just. It is a direct way of touching a bow maker or archer of 10,000 years ago, but only that, and only barely. Aside from the artifact, which may be identical to what you will build using the same tools and of the same wood, the man behind the bow that you are and that a Paleo Indian was stares across an impossible to cross gulf of time and space and experience.
Dane
