Volume 3 Issue 1 January, 2013
Development, De‐civilization & lessons from prehistoric people.
In a recent workshop, Prof Norman Sartorius was expressing his concerns about how de‐civilized our societies are becoming in the name of development. He said “What kind of development is this, for a society which cares less & less of those who are dependent, namely the poor, diseased, children & elderly?” How true was he? We see that happening every day. Our society is immersed in technological advancement & irrational concepts of growth & development, which is being shared globally!! With advancing societies, greed has increased. People have become more self centered, and live in their own world, which one may call “ i‐world or my‐world”.
It may surprise many that a new area of research called “The Bio‐archaeology of Care” is looking into emerging evidence on how wonderfully prehistoric people took care of the sick & disabled. The report suggests that such phenomenon was not uncommon, many explorations are supporting these. It is hard to imagine that more than 4000 years ago people took care of individual affected with Klippel‐Feil Syndrome (A congenital condition, where the individual is paralyzed waist down before adolescence). As one report suggest, this person couldn’t have fed himself or kept himself clean after being affected. Despite this severe disability, he lived another 10 years or so. One can only appreciate how caring those people must have been in prehistoric ages!!
