What We Can Learn from Traditional People

What can we learn from indigenous cultures, who still live the same way that everyone did thousands of years ago?

Geographer Jared Diamond points out that, for most of history, people lived in small groups as hunter-gatherers. Agriculture began 11,000 years ago, and state government is only half that old. But Diamond, who has spent years studying the tribes living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, thinks we can still learn from traditional societies like these.

For instance, take criminal punishment: In contrast to Western criminal-justice systems, the chief of Sudan’s Nuer people has no role in settling disputes but works to facilitate mediation and calculate traditional forms of compensation.

We could also benefit from a more Palaeolithic diet, since traditional societies have much less of the West’s main diseases, such as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and cancer.

Do traditional people include Indians? These people still live, to a certain extent, in a magical world–and part of this magic includes the Visitors. Anne Strieber has interviewed two contactees–just for our subscribers–who discovered, when they consulted their local Indian tribes, that they knew ALL about it!