by Ramblinman » Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:22 am
Tribal humans never nude?
This guy is speaking from his ignorance. In the tropics there remain a few tribes that are profoundly naked their entire lives. They hunt and fish in the nude. And no they don't chase animals through the woods. That's a city boy's imagination at work. Men in the wild capture prey by traps, snares, lures, calls and stealth.
Here in the southern USA, I am well north of the tropics, but outdoor nudity is possible on mild sunny days every month of the year. For five or six months of the year, I can be quite comfortable spending the entire day in the woods, totally nude.
I spend my time exploring the creeks and feasting on berries and wild herbs.
Last week, a summer shower caught me by surprise on a remote trail. The rain was refreshing in the 90 degree heat. The water rolled right off my back and I was dry within minutes and not chilled in the slightest. I would have been chilled had I been wearing clothes.
The human body is splendidly adapted for nude living in forest and field in the warmer months here in the temperate zone.
Not long ago, I went just a few miles south of the Tropic of Cancer and enjoyed an afternoon of skinny dipping in the ocean. It was in January. The ocean felt delightful and the sun and wind dried me just a few minutes after I emerged from the sea.
In pre-Columbian times, people in Tierra del Fuego, (the southernmost finger of Chile a short hop from Antarctica) lived their entire lives in the nude, except for the waterproof robes they draped over their shoulders in the coldest weather.
About a century ago, E.M. Forster wrote a marvelous short story entitled, "The Machine Stops". It described the lives of people in a nightmarish future we hope will never come to pass. Here's a quote from "Kuno", the lead character:
I felt that humanity existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are here. Had I been strong, I would have torn off every garment I had, and gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But this is not for me, nor perhaps for my generation. I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic clothes and my dietetic tabloids! Better thus than not at all.
In Kuno's time, a future we hope will never occur, the human body had grown soft and weak from urban life. Most of us still have a chance to tear off our clothes and go back to the woods and meadows where we belong. But Kuno seems to be urging us to "come as you are" and meet nature and one another as best we can.