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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — The Map’s Blank Center
Chapter 3: — What the Old Way Really Is
Chapter 4: — How to Find People Who Don’t Want to Be Found
Chapter 5: — /Gautscha, and the Camp You Can’t See
Chapter 6: — Land, Ownership, and the Hidden Power of Women
Chapter 7: — Meat, Tracking, and the Economy of Sharing
Chapter 8: — Roots, Melons, and the Labor That Actually Feeds Life
Chapter 9: — Poison, Predators, and the Rules of Survival
Chapter 10: — Marriage, Elders, and the Web That Prevents Collapse
Chapter 11: — Peacekeeping, Trance, and What “Culture” Means
Chapter 12: — Tsumkwe: When the Old Way Breaks
Chapter 13: — The Conservancy and the Myth That Kills
Chapter 14: — What Survives
Description
The Old Way is Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s deeply observed account of the Ju/wa Bushmen (Ju/’hoansi) of Namibia’s Nyae Nyae region—people whose hunter-gatherer life preserved patterns that shaped human evolution. Drawing from her family’s expeditions beginning in 1950, Thomas reconstructs how the Old Way worked: how water determined territory, how roots and meat structured survival, how poison arrows and tracking made hunting possible, and how community rules like sharing and gift exchange kept violence in check.
The book also traces a painful transformation. As Tsumkwe becomes a government hub, hunting is restricted, alcohol and wage labor reshape society, and poverty and violence rise. Thomas argues that what truly defines the Ju/wa is not “primitive technology” but a social culture built on relationships, dignity, and mutual obligation—one the modern world repeatedly misunderstands while claiming to preserve it.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners interested in human origins, hunter-gatherer life, and how ecology shapes culture.
- Readers of anthropology and natural history who want lived, field-grounded storytelling instead of abstract theory.
- Anyone trying to understand the real costs of “development,” conservation policy, and cultural mythmaking.