Tales of the Ethnosphere

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Davis has since journeyed into landscapes as diverse as the high Arctic, the North African desert, the wild valleys of British Columbia, and the mountains of Tibet. A prolific and award-winning author, Davis has written nine books and produced several television documentaries that bring alive for audiences the biological and cultural wonders that he has encountered firsthand.

Wade Davis never set out to become an explorer. "I doubt there was a human being alive who was more confused and uncertain of his destiny than I was in my 20s," he tells me. "But the trait that was my saving grace was an almost visceral, reflexive incapacity to compromise on myself. People ask me, How do you become an explorer? And I sometimes say, If you really knew, you'd go right to law school! Because it wasn't easy. But the key ingredients were following my own heart, taking risks, cultivating a comfort level with risk, and always having one word in my vocabulary for new experiences, which was yes."

Many people know that the biosphere -- the planet's interconnected web of land, water, climate, plants, and animals -- is threatened by pollutants and the destruction of natural habitat. But there is far less awareness that the ethnosphere is also being eroded, and at an even faster rate. Davis explains: "No biologist would dare suggest that 50 percent of all species are on the brink of extinction, because it simply is not true. It would be the most apocalyptic scenario in the realm of biological diversity, and yet it scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic scenario in the realm of cultural diversity."

The loss of languages is an indicator of how much and how quickly the ethnosphere is being degraded. "A language is not just vocabulary and grammar," Davis says. "It's a flash of the human spirit. It's a vehicle though which the soul of a culture comes into the material world." When a language is no longer spoken among people, it is very difficult for that culture to keep alive its unique wisdom and way of life. Today nearly 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide but fully half of them are not being taught to children. This means that "within a generation or two we're losing half of humanity's intellectual, social, and spiritual legacy," Davis says.

It strikes me that the erosion of cultural diversity is happening at a time when humankind could use all the good ideas it can get. It seems logical that in order to learn how to live sensitively on the earth and in harmony with each other, we need many minds, many perspectives, many pools of experience. Indigenous people have a particular knowledge of the place where they live. If it is heeded, this knowledge could go a long way toward addressing the social and environmental challenges we face.

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