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 rainforest 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 catalogue 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.