The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

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House of Anansi Press, 2009 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 262 pages

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures.

In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. In the Andes we discover that the earth really is alive, while in Australia we experience Dreamtime, the all-embracing philosophy of the first humans to walk out of Africa. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. And finally we settle in Borneo, where the last rainforest nomads struggle to survive.

Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy -- a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time.

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Contents

Season of the Brown Hyena
1
The Wayfinders
35
Peoples of the Anaconda
79
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Wade Davis is the bestselling author of several books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow, Light at the Edge of the World, One River,and The Clouded Leopard. He is an award-winning anthropologist, ethnobotanist, filmmaker, and photographer, and his writing and photographs have been widely published. Davis currently holds the post of National GeographicExplorer-in-Residence. He divides his time between Washington D.C. and northern British Columbia.

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