The Wayfinders, Wade Davis
The Wayfinders, Wade Davis
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The Wayfinders
Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

Author: Wade Davis

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 6 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/08/2017


Synopsis

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures.

In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. In the Andes we discover that the earth really is alive, while in Australia we experience Dreamtime, the all-embracing philosophy of the first humans to walk out of Africa. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. And finally we settle in Borneo, where the last rain forest nomads struggle to survive.

Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy—a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalog of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time.

About Wade Davis

Wade Davis is the bestselling author of numerous books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow, Into the Silence, and The Sacred Headwaters. He is also an award-winning anthropologist, ethnobotanist, filmmaker, and photographer. Davis currently holds the post of National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and divides his time between Washington, DC, and northern British Columbia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nathan on April 26, 2017

The Wayfinders is a passionate exploration of several modern-day traditional cultures - ancient people practicing ways of life which have barely changed over thousands of years, often passed down without written language and rich in social, spiritual and environmental significance. The book details......more

Goodreads review by Linda on August 09, 2012

Why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world is what Wade Davis wants us to understand. He points out universal attributes of indigenous peoples and how they are connected to the land and in tune with the natural world they inhabit. The early Polynesian navigators, or “Wayfinders”, could read the......more

Goodreads review by Zuberino on July 03, 2021

Wade Davis is a legendary figure in the worlds of exploration and anthropology, and this series of essays (he was invited to deliver the prestigious CBC Massey Lectures in 2008/09) is a superb introduction to his work. Five essays dedicated to the proposition that each ancient society, regardless of......more

Goodreads review by Caren on January 19, 2013

There is a new book by Jared Diamond that is getting a lot of publicity, but it strikes me that Wade Davis lectured on a similar topic back in 2009 for the Canadian Massey Lecture Series, from which this book was taken. (The Massey Lectures, a week-long annual series of lectures on a political, cultu......more

Goodreads review by Katlyn on November 27, 2015

Easily the best book I've read in awhile, if not ever. I picked it up with no expectations and minimal interest and was immediately sucked into his story telling. He takes you on a journey through science, history, human genius, our natural relationship with the earth, the mistakes we've made and th......more