1067 Visitor talks about his life in the ice age.

1067 Visitor talks about his life in the ice age.

In this meditation Geoff starts and a guide takes over almost straight away.

Geoff
Right, we’ve got this old guy, and the Ice age – we’ve got where he lived. He is showing me that he lived in the Ice Age, in the forest. He is like a woodsman. A big bushy beard. First of all I have just gone into the forest, in snow.

The Guide takes over: Living in the ice age is not as bad as people think. The temperature, of course, is just below freezing. Because what creates the ice age is the precipitation. You’re used to having rain coming in from the sea. The sea creates clouds, they go inland, that produces rain. In the ice age it simply produces snow. So all it means is the atmosphere up there is a lot colder. Then the snow builds up and becomes glaciers. And the glaciers just move much slower, so everything is just at a slower pace.

When the ice age finished of course, then everything sort of broke down and all the water started to move down to create those lakes. That’s what it was. And a few other things as well.

Living in that era is exactly the same as living in the Arctic now. You know, you’re limited to what you can catch, to eat, food-wise. In those days, there was just that, as we weren’t near the coast. I was just animals and birds. And the occasional fish, but being the Arctic there weren’t very many streams. But fish are quite abundant, but I say it’s just literally frozen out. Now, one thing we could do is work with absolute clarity, because there’s nothing else for us to get involved in. If you take your civilization today you have shops and factories and industries and politics and all sorts of things and we had very little you just live for the day, and so you didn’t have possessions. Just small things you kept which were not really valuable possessions. Valuable things were knives, Axes, clothing and blankets. Mostly for survival.

Yeah, that was all. But you got so used to it. And the thing is, we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know any sandy beaches and palm trees and so on. We had sunshine, plenty of sunshine. But where we lived was just freezing cold most of the time.

Anyway, we built a log cabin, easy enough, and then you’ve got firewood. We had firewood. And that’s basically all there was to it. But it was a very, well a very peaceful existence. It was hard I think in those days, but hard compared to today But again, we didn’t know any different. When you’re born into that, that’s all you know, and that you think is a norm So it doesn’t become hard work. It just becomes the norm. This is a stage of development.

If you look back over hundreds of thousands of years, you’ll find there’s been quite a few ice ages.

And what it is, is basically the nature’s sort of getting balanced. You know, you’ve got the highs and the lows. Things go up and down all the time. Temperatures go up and down. And so we get an ice age every 10, 20, 50,000 years or whatever it might be. And that’s just nature balancing itself.

It’s just getting better and better all the time. Well, it was getting better and better but it tends to be in a bit of a mess at the moment because of the pollution and… Because of humans. Humans, yeah. But again, nature is just sorting itself out and it will certainly do that.

So, that was just one particular era which was very nice to start with. You learned quite a lot. You learned a lot about family. You learned a lot about animals, nature, weather. That was really the big thing. And we used to trap animals as well.

We used to travel sometimes to different areas, where we knew there were different groups of people. In those days, we didn’t have many groups as such. It was sort of individuals, a few miles apart. And we did that simply because we needed the area to feed ourselves. I mean if we’re all together in one village it’s a matter of getting a lot of food and you have to travel a long way. So that was just a necessity.

Geoff: Of course winter was much colder. Summer was just cold. Now they are showing me a pile of bones.

You know they ate the animals mainly so they put all the bones there. Surely things like bears and so on would come along and eat the bones etc. I’ll go back into his hut. See if I can pick up anything there and I’ll come back to this pile of bones.

Guide takes over: And being where we were, we could get in touch with the Spirit quite a bit. But not as you know it today. We had beliefs in those days of, you know, being able to talk to our ancestors and spirits and so on. And we could do that, and we would sort of ask for information, a bit like today, how your Christians pray to your God to help with certain things. We did the same sort of thing. And our belief was that our ancestors were in the sky
and they’re a part of the sunlight and a part of the sun and all sorts. And the bones were offerings to gods. So what we would do is throw the bones out there and our thinking was whatever the gods wanted. No that’s not quite right. So, spirit animals, that’s what it is.
So, we throw the bones outside, so the animals, any spirit animals could come along and just take what they wanted. So of course many animals did, and they got to know that that was where there was often food etc. But of course bones built up there over a period of time. But it became a place. So we pleased our gods and this is all linking up with nature and so on. We had our gods which was the sun, the sky and ancient ancestors and so on. They were linked to animals and a lot of the animals were gods if you like. Well the animals had spirits that’s really what it was. So the animals had spirits and we used to appease them and throw the bones outside for animals to come and help themselves.

Geoff: That’s not quite right. I’m half way there but there’s something I can’t get. I’m just looking at a bigger picture again. I’m looking at the horizon and then I can see above the horizon sort of going up to the sky, these gods that they used to worship and they were they’re shiny guys in cloaks one’s got a staff and typical sort of gods that you would worship.

Guide takes over:
The gods and the animals were connected and we used to have to eat the animals. So in a way we were sort of eating the gods. So every time we killed an animal we would give thanks for it, and to keep the balance and to appease others in the forest as well. We would put, not the bones outside, but half the food would go outside onto this pile. And therefore the other animals would come along and they would eat their share.
And that way we were sharing our bounty with the gods and with nature. And that kept this balance. Pray to our gods but they were part of overall nature and everything in one. You’re saying this in those days and we’re talking 20,000 years ago. But there were other tribes doing similar things and they worked slightly different ways. There were quite a few of us who actually lived in this particular frozen area. The next tribe might be maybe 100 miles away, and occasionally we would go on a trek for a few days, a few weeks, and we would go and visit them and come back and so on. And they had their own way of doing things, their own gods, their own totem poles and that sort of thing. And we heard stories from others, because either they stretched for 2,000, 3,000 miles, and we couldn’t get there, but we heard stories, stories that were passed down.
And it’s the same as today, when the stories are passed down, they get exaggerated, you get a broken telephone again, so the story’s not quite as they should be. So I can only speak for what we experienced there. And that was a very interesting life. It was a very clear, basic life. And it was a good understanding. Now you think being out in the middle of nowhere, you’d have nothing to do. Because it’s not like today where you have televisions and internet and friends around the corner and restaurants to go to etc.
There’s nothing. You’re just on your own out there. And I was on my own for many, many years. I had a wife for a short period, but I was on my own for many, many years. And what happens is you become closer to nature.
And when you go out, I mean, it was hard to go out and actually kill an animal. Mainly it was trapping in those days. And it wasn’t a pleasant thing to do, but you know you had to do it because you needed food.
And it’s very little that will grow there, very little. We had a few of the trees would give you pine cones and a few odds and ends, but not much at all. And so during the day, you would really make yourself useful by either hunting if you needed to, or fixing up your load, your chalet, because everything had to be made from scratch. Even plates, knives, forks, all these sort of things had to be made from scratch. First of all you need something sharp, and that of course is very valuable, because with that you can carve out plates and so on and so on. Then you need something sharp to put an animal out of its misery, for example, when you catch it in a trap, you need to cut its throat, to bleed it and so on, and of course skin it. And we had, it was a great difficulty finding rocks where the rocks were shattered so it gave you the equivalent of a blade that you could use and you could sharpen and so on. There were very few places where you could go because everything was covered in snow. So there was a good trade in that where we could meet other people. So once you’ve got a few of those utensils, that’s what’s so valuable to you. But then you’ve got to make things. Just imagine, for example, just making a bed.

That’s a matter of going and getting frozen timbers. You’ve got to find a tree, which is basically died a few years ago, so it’s nice and dry. Now you’ve got to chop the thing down. And you’ve got to chop it down, and then you start putting pieces together. And how do you join all the pieces? So you need rope.
Where do you get rope from? And you’ve got to make holes in the wood. It takes forever. Just to build something small. But that’s what keeps you going. That’s what you do.
And that was a great sense of achievement once you got something done. Now, then you’ve got, what do you do for blankets? It’s pretty simple, you have fur. And so from the various animals, you get a lot of different types of furs,
and that was very nice. Because once the furs have dried, they are so warm and so comfortable. And of course they’re waterproof as well, which is great. So we have big piles of fur, and you’d sleep on furs. A bed would be just raised off the floor, but then it’s just covered in furs, and then you just cover yourself in furs and that’s how you sleep. But then what do you do for lighting? What happens when it gets dark? So you’ve got fire, but how do you keep fire going? Because in those days, it was only in the end we had candles, in the beginning we didn’t. You see being inland where we were, there weren’t any seals and so on for blubber or whales. So we’d have to trade with somebody who’d been to the coast, who’d got some, who could give us some oil so that we could have candles, we could have light at night. But then again, you’ve got a problem with matches. You haven’t got matches. So you have to use flint, or you keep your fire going. Now, because it’s so cold, ideally you’d like to keep your fire going, but now you have a problem. Where do you get all the wood from for your fire?

And then you have got to chop that wood. And that just takes so long. So you spend hours trekking through the woods, finding lightweight trees that have dried up, that are suitable for firewood, because you can’t use green trees. And you find these dead trees, now you’ve got to chop it down, drag it back to your cabin … and then you’ve got to get it in pieces  small enough to put onto your fire. Now we didn’t of course have stoves in those days, you just had a fir.  Fun and games.

Sharon
Absolutely. You look these days; I see now people battle to be on their own.

Guide
Yes, that’s right.  They battle to do nothing. Definitely. And then being closer to animals, the animals soon learnt, of course, which ones got killed for food. But others became very friendly and birds very friendly as well, small birds. Bigger birds we could eat, the equivalent these days of ducks, pheasants, that sort of thing. One could find them, quail, very good. But small birds became very friendly. You’d go out and there’d be various birds hopping around. Small animals that didn’t worry about you at all. They were just there. Which was quite nice.

 

Anyway, that’s about as much as I have for you.  There’s somebody else waiting to talk to you. So I will take my leave and say thank you for listening.

Sharon: Thank you, that was lovely.