I recently finished reading the 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. It was a fascinating book that gave me insight into the history of the people that inhabited the American continent. These people created civilizations which were in many ways different from the Euro-Asian models many of us might hold as examples of civilized societies. A common link between these cultures that once inhabited America, was land design and management: they used ingenious ways to shape the natural landscape that surrounded them. So much so, that the European settlers could not realize that the natural landscape they saw, was to an extent a vast garden that was consciously and deliberately planned.

In its conclusion the book makes an interesting and fascinating claim. It supports that the native Indians greatly influenced the culture and values of what would become the United States. In fact several of the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution had frequent and extended interactions with the native Indian cultures. Many European settlers had lived side by side with Indians, and had observed the great freedom that the Indians valued and enjoyed, as compared to the authoritarian social systems of the European states of the time. Perhaps our modern day societies owe much more to the Indian cultures than what has been thought of before.

It is said that there is a very special variety of bamboo in China. If you sow a seed of this type in fertile ground, you have to be very patient. Indeed, the first year nothing happens: no stem deigns to come out of the earth, not even the tiniest shoot. Neither does it in the second year.

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This is an incredible example of how we can change even desert land conditions. Geoff Lawton implements permaculture principles in The Dead Sea Valley of Jordan. After you watch this video, you can watch Greening the Desert Revisited, to see how things have evolved since the initial land design management.

Yesterday I attended an interesting lecture by Andrew Faust.  The lecture focused on a brief ecological history of the Americas and the World.  It painted a grim picture of humanity’s impact on the ecosystems of our planet over the last 10,000 years.

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Teri Degler is interviewed by Lilou Mace about her latest book, The Divine Feminine Fire, published by Dreamriver Press.

Reflecting on the new year that lies ahead, I found this allegory interesting:

“Elephants born in captivity are restrained by a chain that attaches one leg to a metal spike driven into the ground. This prevents them from roaming. They become accustomed to the fact that, as long as the chain and spike are next to them, they are unable to move.

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