Embrace Technology

[Oblio13]

I try to combine the best of old and new. For example, the timeless pot design with a bail and lid is better made of stainless steel or titanium than of the traditional tin.

When I look at the "gear lists" of early wilderness travelers, I am struck by how similar they are to ours, in function if not in form. Even the kit that Otzi the Iceman (the stone-age fellow who popped out of a glacier in Italy) was carrying corresponds exactly to what us moderns carry into the wilderness: Ax and knife (copper and flint instead of steel), bow and arrows instead of a rifle, a complex fire-making kit instead of matches, parka of woven grass instead of ventile, etc.

The basics stay the same, yet the modern improvements that we often take for granted would have been priceless treasures to earlier people.

 

[Armleywhite]

I really think it all comes down to sentimentality. Yes we have the ability to find our way and survive in the most extreme conditions with the modern technology at our disposal, yet Otzi the Iceman had to make do. I bet you pound to a piece of doodoo, that had he had Ventile or gortex he would never have made his smock out of woven grass. Or do you think he would have prefered to light his fire with flint and coper or a nice windproof lighter?

We like to use methods of old as a way of an alternative and sentimental, not, necessarily better, or easier method of living / passing our time!