The Nomadic Alternative – Page 239

widening circle of explorations providing the mother remains the pivotal point of the circle. The child must always be able to spot her presence, and it takes bearings on the bearings on the maternal lighthouse, and sends out tiresome signals of the "I can see you - you can't see me" variety until the lighthouse admits that she can.

If anything unforeseen or alarming happens - such as the appearance of a white faced stranger to an African child - it tears back to the mother and clings on till fear recedes.

Earlier, I emphasized the importance of the protein content in mothers' milk for children till at least the age of three and a half among peoples who have none from domesticated animals. Furthermore this prolonged dependence on the mother enables a child to develop the sophisticated mental and neural equipment characteristic of our species. The mother of the hunter carries her child with her wherever she goes without interrupting her normal life. Looking after children has nothing whatever to do with sitting at home.*

In this way the child shares all the experiences of its people, good or bad from the earliest age. "Having travelled through jungle and swamp", wrote Allen Holmberg of the Siriono in Amazonia, "he has become acquainted with the plants and animals. He knows the ones which must be avoided. He has felt the prick of mosquitoes, of scorpions, of ants. He has seen where the animals live and how they are shot, watched them cleaned, gutted, quartered and cooked."

As the Yaqhan child learns to talk the mother gives it twigs, leaves, razor-shell clams and funghi to handle and name. By learning the name of everything that grows in his territory, when it comes in season, edible or poisonous, harmless or dangerous, he takes the content of his ancestral lands in his own fingers, plays with it, scrutinizes it, turns it upside down, compares the relation of one thing to another, hides it and finds it again, and thus creates his

Note: We can only admire the mother and envy the child mentioned in an account of a New Mexico commune of p. 111 of the Last Whole Earth Catalogue. "So there she was with a 2-day-old baby hanging off her tit directing the construction of the dome."