Salmon – photo: bbc.com

So Smart

We think we’re so smart. It’s true. It’s rare indeed for anyone to look back on life 100 years ago, much less a thousand years ago, and think, “Wow! They were so smart. Why don’t we give that a try?”

Nope. We’ve been pretty much conditioned to always think modern is better; that innovation and moving forward always means better.

But you have to wonder sometimes. Are there innovations we’re struggling to come up with in the present day that our ancestors (or perhaps the ancestors of people who were wiped out completely) already had pegged millennia ago?

Glad You Asked

Needless to say, I read a fascinating article posted on FB today (hush) that was so great I had to write a quick post about it.

Apparently there have been posts sticking up out of the sand of Comox Harbour, which is located on the east coast of Vancouver Island, for hundreds of years. No one seemed to know what they were and as a result of a lot of disparate circumstances coming together (none of them particularly great to contemplate), no one to ask.

That seems to have been the case until just after the turn of this century, when a college undergrad indulged her curiosity and began a project that took 13 years of patient post counting and then relentless research and downright sleuthing to expose the purpose of the posts.

Sustainable Fishing

Turns out the posts are the last remnants of a means of fishing that warrants study and replication today. Quickly, in fact, as we all know salmon populations are rapidly diminishing due to not only the damming of rivers essential to spawning but the warming of waters due to climate change. We’re in grave danger of being the last generation to know the gift of eating salmon.

But perhaps worse is why no one knew what the posts were. The systematic obliteration of the culture of that area is sickening and morally reprehensible.

I’m going to link to the article again here. The only true issue I have with this article (beyond the inexcusable and appalling treatment of the indigenous of that area) is the journalist’s need to not only iterate but reiterate the fact that the undergraduate who spearheaded this project was ‘mature.’

How or why that is newsworthy escapes me. But I congratulate said ‘mature’ Nancy Greene for her persistence in tracking down this fascinating means of catching fish – which also enabled the fishers to release back into the wild those that exceeded the needs of the people.

How astonishingly refreshing. Imagine.

(T-106)