Having spent years as a teacher I know the wisdom of the parable of not giving a man a fish thereby making him dependent, but rather teach him to fish so he can be independent. But I’m acutely aware of the problems arising from a lack of willingness to learn to fish coupled with a lack of fish, and the presumption of the simple parable is a man would starve to death unless someone were willing to keep giving him fish or someone taught him to fish. An inherent weakness of the parable is obvious; who taught the first guy to fish and how did he keep from starving? You must first learn something before you can pass such knowledge on to others, and this presumes “teachers” were there in order for our most ancient ancestors to survive, and the question will continue to be a mystery to me where the earliest teachers of agriculture and metal-working came from?

We know the early colonists in America would have starved to death without the help of indigenous Indians, but the questions remain how the Indians had learned the things they knew? Most of what is taught about this is no more than educated guesswork passed on to the naïve and gullible as “gospel,” but if one were able to speak to those ancient races preceding the colonists they would have said their knowledge had come to them from shamans who had been taught of the gods. It simply is not enough for “experts” to declaim on things like the beginnings of agriculture and metal-working prefacing their remarks by the ambiguous prefatory caveat “It is thought…” though you will hear this not only in classrooms but being repeated on the History Channel and others.

For those of us who were raised to fish as a necessary supplement to the family pot it was a real luxury to make the transition to “sport fishing,” creating and tying our own lures, learning the fine art of flycasting in pristine, wilderness trout streams. But even as a boy making this transition here in the Sequoia National Forest the essentials of fishing out of necessity for providing food never departed from me. However, I never ventured into the forest hereabouts without thinking about the Indians who had occupied this place long before the incursion of civilization with homesteaders and settlers, ranchers and farmers.

Before the dam was built here in the Kern River Valley, Isabella had a population of around 36 people and Kernville 115; so I trekked all over the area undisturbed. And in my forest forays I would come across evidence everywhere of the Indians who used to live here. I acquired a marvelous collection of arrowheads and obsidian tools used for scraping hides and other utilitarian purposes. There were holes in large rocks made for the purpose of grinding dried acorns and nuts for meal, and I would find small bones and beads used for decoration and jewelry. Various glyphs painted or chiseled in rocks were numerous, and I enjoyed trying to interpret them.

But even as a boy I could understand how harsh living conditions had to have been for the Indians, and how delicate the balance of survival. While the area was rich in game and fish, nevertheless it had to have been a constant battle for survival. Living on the mining claim without any utilities and having only a wood cook stove, a hand-dug well for water and an outhouse was Spartan enough to give me a realistic sense of what the Indians endured. But unlike the Indians, we did have the modern benefit of a battery-powered Zenith radio for entertainment and news of the outside world.

Looking back, it was an idyllic life for me with the whole of this forest area, the wild Kern River and numerous trout streams in which to explore, hunt and fish to my heart’s content. But life had to have been very harsh for my great-grandmother and grandparents. Yet, during the six years here they endured all the hardship without a word of complaint, and both my great-grandmother and grandmother died in their own beds here under those conditions without the benefit of hospital or other medical services.

In short, I have lived a primitive lifestyle and have no illusions concerning either the simplicity in living preached by Thoreau or what some today construe as “getting back to nature.” I also know what it is to grow things for necessary food rather than keeping a garden as a hobby, to raise and butcher animals, to hunt and fish out of necessity rather than being a pastime or “sport.” And many of us with a background of farms and the Dust Bowl migration together with the exigencies brought about by WWII with rationing and other hardships are not naive to being reduced to extreme circumstances of living in “survival mode.”

Many of us old-timers remember living with kerosene lamps, wood stoves, thundermugs and outhouses, and though knowing what it means to “do with, or do without” have no hankering for a return to those “good old days.” The difference between those that think they know and those having lived it are two very different things.

Both experience and necessity are often harsh teachers, but often as well the only teachers whose lessons must be learned for the sake of survival. So, with my background I look on the history of humankind with a sense of awe and wonder that we survived at all given the enormous odds against our species, and the words of “experts” touting “It is thought…” have not nearly the significance to me and carry little weight in the face of the realities of nature I have learned first hand.

For those that believe it was less than “miraculous” for our ancestors to have learned how to survive, to have a sustainable agriculture and discovered iron and make essential implements of it, you are left without a viable explanation otherwise. And who doesn’t wonder how the ancients discovered what fruits, nuts, and vegetables were edible? Sure, they could have observed what animals and insects ate and followed the example, but the history of agriculture does not follow this path.

One of the many things I learned to do here as a boy along with taxidermy and other “useful” skills was making my own clay pottery. The red clay soil to be found in what is known now as Wofford Heights was ideal to the purpose. But as with taxidermy and many other things, I had first read several articles on the subject of making things of clay. While I could very well have learned how to make pots and dishes of clay accidentally, it was much easier to have a “teacher” giving me guidance. And so it is with many of the things we take for granted today but somewhere back in time there had to be teachers, and when it comes to agriculture and iron for example it simply isn’t plausible such teachers came from our ancient ancestors.

Researching cultural anthropology and studying the ways of ancient peoples always leaves one with a sense of wonder how some cultures went in a direction of great achievement and others continued to exist as primitives. Henry Thoreau used the example of cannibals forsaking eating one another once introduced to the better ways of civilization, but the question remains where the civilized first learned their better ways? The answer isn’t always to be found in textbooks or on the History Channel. Surviving on nuts, berries, and insects, weaving mats of rushes and wearing nothing but animal skins does not promote a civilization. This required a methodical, sustainable agriculture and the use of iron implements. And while I admire my Indian ancestors, as a boy I had no desire to trade my shotgun or rifle for bow and arrows as a means of survival.

While some may believe our species learned about these things in the manner of “It is thought…” this just isn’t plausible. But if one demands an answer on the basis of what is actually known about the origins of these essential things, they are doomed to disappointment. Given my own personal iconography, my education and life’s experiences I’m of a mind like Sherlock Holmes that when the plausible and probable fails to explain things, no matter how seemingly implausible and improbable look to this for an answer.