Woodland Free Food

[Timelord]

For the point raised about expecting not to be able to survive in the wild for extended periods of time & just so these type of thoughts do not dishearten you >>>>>>

Humankind has survived as "Hunter Gatherers" for 99% of the time we have walked on this planet. There are still tribes not yet murdered, living out there that exist this way. It is a perfectly natural, doable way of surviving. In living memory during war years, some of the population resorted to supplementing their diet by "gathering" from the wild. The only problem with trying to live the Hunter Gatherer lifestyle today from our cultural perspective, is that a lot of the knowledge is lost - we think, compared to surviving hunter gatherer cultures in other parts of the globe. That knowledge which does survive is dispersed and transposed through hundreds or thousands of years. So it is a lot more effort to relearn just a fraction of this surviving & retro engineered knowledge nowadays and with us not being subjected to it from birth.
Farming started in the Neolithic period, so in this country that was approx between 4000 and 2500 BC. It was a gradual expansion & development of the domestication of wild animals by hunter gatherers and soon after of edible vegetation at pre determined locations of migrations/seasonal sites. Eventually this led to settling at one of the most favourable locations. Possibly originally by a skeleton "caretaker" crew and later by the whole group/tribe. farming was successful because it enabled a SURPLUS of goods to be produced and so traded on with other groups. This leads to a raised standard of living through the aquisition of greater communal wealth - wether this be in farm land, cattle, horses, tools, resources or other goods. Communities that were settled & practised farming were also more suitable for a power elite to grow on the back of - as a mutually supportive pact (sound familiar??). this led to greater stability - that is until competition for resources & farmland arose. (The American west settlement ended up with a similar result, but on speed and with guns. Yeehar!!)

Today in this modern world of the last few hundred years and especially in recent times with the media and internet revolution, for the first time we have had the ability to compile this knowledge & cross reference it against sources and surviving hunter gatherer communities. This has led to our general popular reawakening of these ancient skills & knowledge. Whilst it will likely never be complete or 100% accurate, it is an ongoing successful historical study that we can put into practical use. Appreciation goes to those few guardians that passed on the knowledge down the generations that has been a key part in our understanding.

Happy studies, TL