Mammoths & Neolithic Memories - feeling no pain

Many women will proudly tell you how tough they are, how they can bear pain better than men. They will tell you how, when they get a headache or stomach ache, they'll take an aspirin and carry on, while their men crash into bed for three days and act as if the world's coming to an end.

However, if a man gets punched on the arm there's little reaction while a woman's bruise may last for weeks. And there are men who continue playing sport with a broken nose or rib, and simply shrug it off.

Yes, women have a higher threshold for inner pain while men have a higher tolerance for outer pain, as befits our Neolithic upbringing. After spending months preparing their weapons, the men would practise with their spears and slingshots, to be ready for the annual mammoth hunt. These practises invariably turned into competitions and this pushed the men to greater strength and accuracy. The hunting was a very physical and, often, painful activity and so the elders of the cave would create body-contact games to toughen up the young men.

While the men developed their outer strength and hardness, the women bore children - with all the inner changes and pains that that meant. Also, when food was short, the men were fed first, for their strength was needed to gather the sparse food. Children were next to be fed and the women last. So women developed inner strength to deal with child bearing, child-birth, menstruation and hunger.

While the men were "out there', competing and hunting, the women were "in there", preparing and nurturing. Though the men worked together during the hunt, they had to compete in their preparation, for it to be successful. For the women's work to be successful, they had to work together, making clothes, food and children. The women's world was, of necessity, cooperative all the time while the men both competed and cooperated.

And, though men don't hunt mammoth any more, we still compete with each other in endurance, speed, throwing things, accuracy and in body-contact sports. We've forgotten why we do these things but there's still a primordial urge to do them. We think we're modern and New Age, but we're just Neanderthals who have gained more toys and modes of expression and who have lost our reason for being and doing.

And, in these competitions on the sports field and the boardroom, we must cooperate as well, to survive. This switching between competition to cooperation can be confusing and many have not fully learned when each is appropriate. When the mammoth is charging, you know exactly what to do, but when the goal is some illusive approval from a fickle and changing audience or boss, the action needed is not quite so clear. We couldn't afford to make mistakes in front of the mammoth and so there was rigorous training and initiation for the young men - today there is none of that and the learning has to be by trial and error. The cost of mistakes today isn't measured in individual lives, at the feet of the mammoth, but can be counted in terms of unemployment, family breakdowns, depression, injuries, diseases and a whole host of emotional, financial and physical costs. The mistakes, today, affect many more people and there must be a better way to learn.

We really haven't advanced much at all.

For example, of the tens of thousands of edible plants on our planet, only about 20 are eaten in quantity. Of these, wheat, corn and rice account for half our food intake. Why? These were the foods grown by our Neolithic ancestors, 10,000 years ago. The animals we raise for food are not eaten because they are especially nutritious or delectable, but because they were the ones first domesticated in the Stone Age. Our adventurousness has only been about the peripheral things - never about the basics.

The memory of the cave, igloo, tepee, sod house and the village is with us all and, while our outer trappings have changed, the inner "us" hasn't.

The wonderful thing about our eternal memories is that we haven't forgotten the spirit and activities of the clan, tribe and village. We still retain the knowing of the mentorship, cooperation, respect for and listening to the wise people, initiations into various stages and skill in life, joys of community and burdens of playing our part. Because these memories are so vivid, we can return to those times at will, and that's what we're doing in this "New Age".

The New Age is not about the peripheral (and sometimes misleading and irrelevant) things like crystals, tarot cards, channelings, healings and so on. The New Age is about returning home to who we truly are. It's about reconnecting with our roots, our deep wisdom, the Earth and our fellow humans. In the ebb and flow of the universal breath, we've been exhaling, looking out and being enticed by the clever devices we've reinvented. Now it's time to breathe in, to look at our real and deep needs, to recreate the village or tribe, to decide which technologies serve us well and which don't.

Crystals, tarot cards, channelings, healings and so on may help us along the path but they are not The Path. The Path is us and this "us" has never changed - we've just forgotten some of it.

Whether you wear bear-skins or business suits, feathers or frocks, you're still the same inside. And, if a mammoth turned up in your garden today, you'd know exactly what to do with it, for you've been practising for millennia.