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There were all kinds of stories told to travelers
and to anthropologists for many reasons. The problem has always been
one of considering that native peoples are all fundamentalists who speak only
the truth and mean everything that they told these foreign invaders.
I suspect that many of these stories are about as reliable as crop
circles.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 5:46
PM
Subject: Re: Euthanasia, etc (was RE:
[Futurework] 103. Western society is collapsing
I think Tor has you on this one, Keith.
Yet it would make a good Ingmar Bergman movie.
The Inuit, under conditions of extreme
hardship, would leave family members behind if they couldn't keep up,
probably by their consent. However, I recall in the 1970s hearing a
very old Inuit woman testify before the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline
Inquiry how she and a younger brother were separated from their family
when they were children. After having listened to her, I followed where
they went on a map. They covered a tremendous distance. They
encountered people once or twice, but were chased away. Finally, after
months of wandering and looking after themselves, someone took them in.
It was an incredible story.
I'm sure they weren't toddlers at the time -
probably in their early teens, and they probably had a pretty good idea of
where to head to look for camps. It may also have been that the
separation may not have been a deliberate abandonment. The kids may have
wandered off and for some reason they and their parents could not find each
other. Whatever, it was a very good story!
Ed
Tor,
I can't give you a reference because it was several years
ago when I read
it, but it was an academic book and it *was* talking of
(relatively) recent
history. I hope you don't take offence. No imputation
about Scandinavians
was intended. I'm willing to be corrected but I'd be
happy to place a bet
right now that my memory is correct about this if we
had an expert
Scandinavian historian available to consult. It only
happened in the very
far north. Each family had its own ceremonial site
and every member of the
family held the hammer. They didn't use it every
year, of course --
otherwise they'd run out of grandmothers! -- but only
when they'd had a bad
summer.
Keith Hudson
At 15:41
26/09/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>Ketih Hudson wrote:
>
>
> From what I've read from anthropological studies, all
pre-industrial
> > societies practised some sort of euthanasia or
mercy-killing when their
> old
> > folk lost their marbles or
became too much of a burden. Only 200 years ago
> > in northern
Scandinavia, if farming families didn't have enough food
>
stored
> > for all of them to survive the winter, they would club
their oldest family
> > member at a ceremonial site, all members of
the family holding the club.
>
>
>I live in Scandinavia, and
most of Scandinavia was christened almost a
>thousand years ago, and
christened people did not use til kill their own
>parents in that way!
I have read that more than a thousand years ago
>things like that might
have happened, but not 200 years ago! But a
>thousand years ago
everbody who did not die from wounds inflicted by
>weapons had to be
cut by weapons to get to Vallhall. It was other
>traditions at that
time!
>
>Tor Førde
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place,
Bath, England,
<www.evolutionary-economics.org>,
www.handlo.com>,
<www.property-portraits.co.uk>
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