Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

[Turgon]

This documentary follows a group of hunters that live in a remote Siberian settlement with their families. It spans throughout most of the year showing how they live and hunt, basing their plans and actions as the different seasons come about, and surviving in upwards of -50 C weather. Their main source of income is trapping sables for their fur, so they spend the winter in isolation away from their families. But you see them as being handymen in many trades and it gives a rare insight into what Paleolithic man may have gone through living in an Ice Age.

What's also interesting to note is that for food, they caught a lot of fish to get through the harsh winter, possibly adding to Dr. Kruse' theory that a high omega 3 ratio helps with adapting to the cold.

It's available free on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjKjl5hOsO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFHtuVqFMV0

 

[Rabelais]

I just watched it. This is an excellent documentary by Werner Herzog. The Siberian Taiga is one of the last completely wild areas on the planet, and to survive there requires much skill. A good teaching tool for existence in an ice age. Although they now have such modern tools as chainsaws, outboard motors and snowmobiles, they still rely on their axes, hand made snow shoes, dugout boats and dogs, and could get by with those alone.

Happy People also depicts the plight of the aboriginal Asian inhabitants, who like the native Americans have sadly been reduced to second class status, menial labor and alcoholism. They are throwbacks to the old shamanistic cultures and still tenaciously possess their household religious icons.

Although it is a brutally cold existence to us, the inhabitants are truly happy there. They have a choice and they made this one.