Appropro of nothing, I offer the first few paragraphs from a story in today’s Wall Street Journal. This is a strange, but compelling narrative:
YAEDA VALLEY, Tanzania—In a bygone era, 27-year-old Emmanuel Mussa would likely have been preparing arrows tipped with the poison from the desert rose for a hunt across the forested plains with other Hadzabe tribesmen.But on a recent morning, the university graduate was dusting the crimson fuel tank of his Chinese-made motorbike before beginning a 5-mile ride to his office in a nearby settlement, where he works as a project manager for a social enterprise selling carbon credits.
Mussa also regularly visits the town of Mbulu, 30 miles away, to buy groceries. He lives in an iron-roofed house, tends a small potato garden in his front yard and tracks global events—from the conflicts in the Middle East to European soccer—via his smartphone.
It is a stark illustration of how one of the world’s last hunter-gatherer societies is being absorbed into the modern world.
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Anthropologists believe the Hadzabe—who number fewer than 1,300 people—have roamed the Yaeda Valley in northern Tanzania for more than 50,000 years. They are believed to be the second-oldest people on Earth after the San people of southern Africa. Living in nomadic groups, the men use handmade bows and arrows to hunt Cape buffalo, baboons and the rodent-like hyrax. They climb giant baobab trees to raid beehives for honey. Women forage for fruit and tubers.For generations, the Hadzabe, [also known as the Hadza], have kept their distance from modern agriculture, guns, missionaries, poachers and encroaching pastoralists. They are the only ethnic group in Tanzania allowed to hunt and gather food in protected areas,
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