Adi man

[Manfred M]

The Adi are one of the predominant tribes in the areas of Arunchal Pradesh that we visited.

This man was squatting on the ground, just working away with some of the grasses as we walked through Siboh Village.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[thegman]

Excellent shot Manfred, how old is this guy, I bet he is still doing this the same way as when he was a younger man

[Manfred M]

Excellent shot Manfred, how old is this guy, I bet he is still doing this the same way as when he was a younger man

Thanks Gerry.

We did ask and discovered that amongst the "older" generations, age and birthdates were a bit of a fuzzy concept. Anyone in their fifties and older wasn't quite sure how old they were as these things were not recorded back then. Records were not kept back then, when these folks were born, although they have been over the past number of decades. We've run into similar concepts in other tribal areas of the world too; puberty was the mark of adulthood, rather than the calendar age.

I think that these more "primitive" societies might be onto something. Our entire society system tries to pigeon-hole things by things we can easily measure; age is one of them. In the part of Canada where I live, you can get a job and drive car at 16, can vote or join the military at 18 and legally drink alcohol at 19. There is something strange and perverse how we set these artificial targets without looking at the competence or maturity of individuals (which are probably more realistic indicators as to what we should or should not do), and use a simple, but meaningless measure (age) be the determining factor.

I often think we can learn a lot from people we Westerners consider "primitive".