There was a time where love was blind and the stars shone brightly...
It has been some time since my last post on this blog and I can't fault anyone for not even checking up on the content. It has been a bussy couple of years studying all things plant and speculating about the stars above us. So for now I want to tell you a story about humanities relationship between agriculture/technology and its ancestral myths. As always, these are just musings and recollections of myself without a claim to the whole truth.
Lets begin...
I want to tell you a story about three little sisters and how it mirrors the dual nature of myths acting as a vehicle for cultural norms and technology. Imagine a plot of agricultural land in the Americas, North or South does not matter, but try to visualize it. What do you see? Maize, legumes, fruit? Whatever you see try to remember that in nearly all North- and Meso-American nations a little myth containing three little sisters is widespread cultural knowledge.
In general the stories go as follows: There were three sisters living together in the fields, the oldest was tall and steadfast, the second oldest was wiry and always moving about, and the youngest didn't know how to walk so she crawled all over the place. During the changing of the season a boy/girl moves close to the field, and due to its ingenuity creates something worthwhile. The youngest and the second oldest are so enamored with it that they follow the interlop back home, while the oldest waits for her sisters still standing tall in the field. After some time she gets lonelier and begins searching for her beloved sisters. The story ends with her meeting her sisters again at the home of the boy/girl, and the sisters keeping the homeowners fed by their being.
Let that sink in for a moment. If you followed this story with your mind and filled in some gaps (using your imagination and all), you might have seen the connection between the visualization earlier and the three sisters. To keep a long story short: the three sister are representations of the agricultural cultivars of corn (the oldest), beans (the second oldest), and winter squash (the youngest, which stand tall in the field (corn), wiry and always moving (beans), and crawls across the floor (squash). The descriptions used in in the myth represent the different growing habits of the plant species. While corn stands tall and acts as a support for the beans, which provides nitrogen for the soil, the squash plant crawls over the ground and suppresses weed.
So just as the mythical three sisters support each other, the plants create a rich environment for optimal growth. This early version of companion planting is therefore transported through time as a cultural myth, which enables later generations to stay connected to their heritage via myth and shared technology of companion planting.
If we now take a step back one can see that this combination of knowledge transfer via myth is something that is truly astounding. Not only did our earlier ancestors acquire the knowledge to plant these cultivars together to reap the benefits of synergy (which is especially astounding, as the different species where cultivated at different times), but also they packaged the knowledge in such a way that it can be taught easily via storytelling. In recent years a lot of educational research has shown that exactly this kind of storytelling can act as a great learning method.
What I was trying to get across with this shared myth is the fact that myths act as containers for knowledge which the society deems so essential that it needs to be distilled and compressed. Combining this with the fact that this knowledge is necessary for survival (agriculture keeps one fed) it becomes clear that learning about myths and putting them in the context of specific cultural technologies and regional environments, allows the synthesis of general principles wich could pave the way towards a more organic and sustainable future. For example using the the technique of companion planting to reduce labor input, water consumption, and provide a balanced diet with all important nutrients.
So next time you hear a myth or listen to a story ask yourself: What is it actually trying to say, what did the people back then try to tell itself? Because if you do that, you might get a glimpse behind the veil of reality and see what is possible out there.