Mr. Salamak Klathalay. Photo: CNN. This unique way of life came to an abrupt end in 2005, following the 2004 tsunami. The Moken people survived, even completely unscathed after the disaster, relying on the traditional experience of foraging for high ground. than to avoid waves. However, in an effort to assimilate the Moken into Thai culture, the government has moved more than 300 Moken people to more fortified land, in the area of ​​Ko Surin National Park, Phang Nga province. , Southern Thailand. Since then, the Moken have more or less adapted to a relatively modern life. They have gradually built a village with simple wooden and bamboo houses, equipped with solar panels and running water. And for the first time, they get a regular source of income from tourism. Ngoey Klathalay – Head of the village said: “We make money from selling souvenirs to tourists or leading boat tours”; “On average, about 100 tourists visit the village every day.” However, the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly broke out in early 2020, forcing the Thai Government to close to international tourism, losing the almost only source of income for the Moken people. In that moment, the survival instinct – sailing, hunting and gathering again strongly rose up in Moken people. Hook Klathalay, Ngoey’s brother, said: “I’ve been living on this boat for two years.” For Hook, the attraction of the sea prompted him to quickly return to the traditional Moken life. Mr. Hook Klathalay. Photo: CNN Hook and his son built a boat with tools such as nets, hooks, three-pronged spears… and conducted daily hunting trips in various shallow waters. “With just a little rice, we can get the rest of the necessities in the ocean,” says Hook. Hook adds that the pressure of the Covid-19 pandemic has caused the Moken to re-evaluate their way of life; many Mokens told Hook that they wanted to live in a boat, on the ocean. Many Moken people are also gradually returning to hunting, daily collecting shellfish, crustaceans and small fish through rudimentary tools such as knives and spears. However, the sea is not the only source of food for the Moken. They also go to the wooded islands to dig for tubers they call “murung”. Boiled and peeled, the “murung” tuber has a texture and flavor similar to that of a “water chestnut”. Ngoey said: “Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the income of Moken people has decreased, but not much in my opinion; We are not desperate, we are not starving. For a long time we were not dependent on tourism, we only did tourism for a few years. But we will always have the sea.”

The Republic of Nauru is an island nation in Micronesia in the South Pacific Ocean. With approximately 12,000 inhabitants living on an area of ​​21 square kilometers, Nauru is the smallest country in the South Pacific Ocean, and the third smallest in the world by area. However, the island nation was once rich enough to rival Saudi Arabia thanks to its abundant phosphate deposits made up of bird droppings. Bird droppings accumulated centuries ago on this island. Phosphate is an important ingredient in fertilizer production. The huge reserves of phosphate on the island of Nauru are the result of bird droppings (guano) over several thousand years. Because phosphates are located close to the ground, humans can separate them easily. Nauru’s economy peaked in 1975 thanks to revenue from phosphate mining, when the island’s GDP per capita was estimated at $50,000, ranking 2nd in the world. Nauru’s economy boomed, people lived better without having to fish or cultivate or gather. Western lifestyle is also spreading here, making the locals more and more lazy and like fast food. With a huge amount of money from mining, Nauru built an airport, even bought 7 planes to serve traffic and tourism. “Not many people care about whether the investment is profitable or not. Dollars are even used as toilet paper. Life was like an everyday party,” recalls an unnamed former president of Nauru. As resources dried up and investors withdrew, Nauru was left with heavy environmental pollution and no main source of income. The fishing and agricultural sectors have been abandoned and polluted, while the people are too used to a life of enjoyment. To get the phosphates, workers had to peel off all the topsoil and separate the phosphates from the ancient coral columns. So, after the phosphate disappeared, only tall coral reefs and depressions between them were visible—a type of terrain where humans could not live or plant trees. The value of the investment fund managing the island’s resources also decreased. The fund also made many misguided investments in Air Nauru and overseas hotels. These investments never yield returns and even stifle the domestic economy. In Nauru, visitors will have nothing to visit because this island has only 30 km of roads, no museums, cultural heritage, hotels or even rivers and mountains to explore. Every year, only about 200 visitors come to Nauru and they are mainly social activists or scientific researchers. From a rich country, using dollars to make toilet paper, Nauru fell to a poor island nation with a GDP of only about 102 million USD, the second lowest in the world after Tuvalu. About 90% of Nauruans are unemployed and corruption and money laundering are rampant. The people of Nauru instead of finding their way to economic development, they leave their fate to international aid as well as look for cheap imported food sources, which contain a lot of fat and sugar such as low nutrition, from Australia or New Zealand. Please watch the video: Beautiful natural scenery in the least populous countries in the world

The Co Tu woman prepares for a fishing trip with a racket. Photo: Nguyen Van Son Elder of Co Tu Colau Blao village (77 years old), currently living in Voong village, Tr’Hy commune, Tay Giang district, said: In the area where Co Tu people live, there is a plentiful source of raw materials from mountains and forests such as rattan, bamboo, bamboo, giant umbrella and vines, … grow wild. This is a condition for Co Tu people to develop craft knitting, including net knitting, racking to catch fish, to serve the daily needs as well as transport, hunting and gathering from the sky. course. The Co Tu people call the fish racket to be cracked. To have a fishing racket (zơ rift), upland Co Tu people (Co Tu đriu) of the communes: Cho Chum, Cha Val, Ztailh (Nam Giang district) and communes: Ch’Om, Ga Ry, A Xan , Tr’Hy (Tay Giang district) exploited the forest from upland seaweed trees. The upland tree grows wild, has a small, flexible stem, is 1-1.5m high, and has a diameter of about 0.5cm. Trees grow in bushes, each bush has about 100 trees, if well cared for, the tree can be maintained for a long time, because after cutting old trees, the young trees will grow again. The bark of the tree has 2 layers: the outermost layer is greenish gray, the second layer consists of small fibers and is used for the fibers. The Co Tu women cut down the bhow tree and used a knife to remove the outer shell, the silk shell left behind to get the fibers. The fibers of the upland plant are soaked in the stream for about a week, then picked up and dried for spinning. Narrow yarn is very useful in fishing rackets. As for the Co Tu people in the lowland (Co Tu Phuong), belonging to the communes: Zơ Ngay, Song Kon, Mā Cooih, Ta Lu, Za Hung … (Dong Giang district) often used the leaves of the pineapple tree to get the thread to weave the net. making fishing lines, knitting rackets to catch fish … Wanting to knit a racket, Co Tu women often go to the fields, cut the pineapple leaves, dry them, then with a razor the outer layer on both sides of the leaves is left. white silk fibers again, then wear them to dry. Accordingly, the way of spinning these two fibers is also simple. The Co Tu woman took the separated small fibers and put them into the calf and then squeezed her hand into larger strands with her hand. How much se is wrapped in bundles to save knitting gradually. During leisure time, in addition to weaving, Co Tu women in the mountainous region of Quang Nam also often knit a net to catch fish. Co Tu women often go fishing together to catch fish with a net during the day or on a moonlit night in large numbers. Each group of a few women divided the river, stream, and slot to stir, making the water cloudy, the fish stayed in the niches, caves, and found the cave running out. Women only need to soak the racket to prepare the fish to enter itself. To catch more fish, a woman with one handle moves the racket to match the water level. Then, the stream of racquets slowly glides over the water. The job seems simple, but the way of catching fish with a racket is quite effective for the women of Co Tu in the mountainous region of Quang Nam, helping them to find more food sources to improve their daily meals. It is worth mentioning, the Co Tu people do not rampant fishing and destroy aquatic species. In order to protect aquatic resources, except in cases where the village has festivals and needs fish to entertain guests, the village will allow it, but must comply with the regulations, so the way of catching fish with a net or a net of the Co Tu show their humanity and sense of the environment. The Co Tu people only catch large fish to eat them, not small fish to keep them growing. When exploiting fish is not enough to eat, Co Tu people often preserve fish by salt impregnation and put the caught fish in giant umbrellas, bamboo tubes to reserve food in the season and serve the festival. village traditions. Today, although there are many convenient and readily available industrial products, the living environment of the Co Tu people in Quang Nam has also changed many times, but the items are made from the bark of the hilly tree, the leaves of the pineapple tree for fiber. nets, fishing ropes, and fishing rackets still exist in the Co Tu people’s life. I think that the retention and dissemination of knowledge and experience in fishing for the Co Tu young generation is necessary and can build it into a cultural identity of the Co Tu people in the region. Truong Son.

The extinct prehistoric mammoth was believed to be prehistoric human prey. A controversial new study found that the first humans were large predators who took down prey with skilled hunting skills. In a new research paper, the scientists argue that humans and close relatives have been adept hunters from a very early age, starting at least 2 million years ago. Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai, researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and Raphael Sirtoli, a PhD student at Minho University in Portugal. “Until now, efforts to recreate the Stone Age human diet have been based mainly on comparison with 20th century hunter-gatherer societies,” says Ben-Dor. Of course, this comparison is lame, because 2 million years ago, hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and other large animals, while hunter-gatherers today. It can’t be like that. The whole ecosystem has changed, and the conditions cannot be compared. ” Scary evidence Fossil evidence from earliest human ancestors is scarce. But based on archaeological evidence, Ben-Dor said, it was clear that Homo sapiens and their close relatives ate anything that was edible. But how much of their diet consists of plants versus animals is the bottom line. Many animals that are considered omnivores actually have the diet in one way or another. Chimpanzees, for example, are technically omnivores, but meat makes up only about 6% of their diet. Dogs and wolves are predominantly carnivorous but sometimes also nibble on grain, leading to a debate over whether they should be classified as omnivores or predators. According to Ben-Dor, ancient humans Homo habilis ate meat at least 2.6 million years ago. Another primitive human species, Homo erectus, appeared to be an avid carnivore 1.8 million years ago; Their teeth and intestines shrank compared to their previous ancestors, adapted to digest meat instead of plants, and it used stone tools capable of grinding meat. Ben-Dor and Barkai argue in their paper, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, that meat is not just a reward for these humans and the early Homo sapiens. Instead, the authors believe, large animals weighing more than 1,000 kg, such as elephants, hippos and rhinos … make up the bulk of the human diet. The elephants 500,000 years ago could weigh 12 tons, compared with 4 to 6 tons today. Eat a lot of meat, human brain evolution? According to the researchers, these animals can eat fatty meat, which is very suitable to feed the energy-hungry human brain. The authors argued in another recent article that hunting large prey could be the driving force behind human brain evolution. However, the idea is controversial, and researchers disagree on how huge amounts of meat would be useful to hunter-gatherers in the days before refrigeration, as well as about ancient humans skilled in taking down prey that other predators like lions, struggled to defeat. “There are some archaeologists who say, they hunted elephants once, but it’s like a once in a lifetime hunt; that’s what grandparents often tell their children,” John said. “There are people who say that elephant meat can last a long time without preserving, but it’s part of their routine,” said Hawks, a paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. important to them. ‘” Ben-Dor and his colleagues wrote in their article that eating large, fatty animals would be a benefit to humankind at the earliest, because losing so many calories on a hunting trip – instead of repeatedly trying to stalk smaller prey. Humans exhibit this high-fat adaptation, researchers say. Archeologically speaking, it was difficult to classify humans and their relatives as carnivores before about 50,000 years ago. That’s because the only reliable biochemical way to distinguish an animal as the top predator or lower in the food chain is a method known as stable nitrogen isotope analysis, requires collagen testing for molecules that are taken orally into the body. Despite the limited evidence of humankind’s early evolution, the researchers say, much remains to be done to prove whether the human ancestor was indeed carnivores. This could include more research on the abundance of animals of different sizes during the Pleistocene, exploring genetic changes over time that could alter the digestibility of species. Different human feeds and comparison of prey size trends over time.