The archaeologist who lived for a few months as in prehistory

LIVING AS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES

What can theprimitive manWhat lesson is useful for us to learn from this? lifestyle of the caveman? It almost seems like a board game, but in reality it is a scientific experiment, in the field, carried out by Bill Schindler, the most famous archaeologist in the world, professor at Washington College, accustomed to giving lessons to his students while touring the forests of Maryland, in the United States.

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BILL SCHINDLER

Schindler's thesis, who created a reality show for National Geografic living for a long time just like a caveman (looking for water and food, trying to make fire, building a hut), is very interesting and very modern. Progress certainly helps improve the quality of life, but there is something that can worsen it, and by a lot: our indifferenceSchindler says: “In the past, for example, when too many animals were killed or too many plants were harvested, people immediately saw the impact that this had. waste had on the environment, and therefore they were in a position to react promptly”.

RETURN TO NATURE

Clear, right? For primitive man, waste, starting with those human resources that we are destroying so casually today, meant immediate effects on his life and on the balance he had built. Visible, clear effects, and easier to contain, once identified. On the contrary, contemporary man wastes with indifference because he is unable to grasp, immediately, in real time, the damage he is producing with his actions. And if he destroys a tree, is unable to evaluate the effect of this gesture, he considers it something that belongs to the future, and therefore does not even care. But this is not Schindler's only important discovery. According to the archaeologist, as he told the American magazine The Atlantic, “the true value of all this is not to try to live like prehistoric man, but to apply what we learn from the past to contemporary problems”. Thus, banally, returning to appreciate the satisfaction of having escaped a danger, healed from an infection, having found thewater or having lit a fire on a freezing night, one can rediscover the very meaning of life. Because, after all, happiness understood as a lasting state does not exist, what exists and makes us happy is its perpetual search.

The photos are taken from a reportage of the National Geografic

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