Old Time Geology Survives
We are culturally inclined to replace the encounters that enabled humans to survive for tens of thousands of years in favor of advanced detection gadgetry, complex analytic formulas, and sophisticated simulation programs. Our conclusions are no longer based upon experience of each entity’s unique combination of temperature, weight, texture, smell, size, and sound.
Until this week, it seemed that such intimate interactions with our planet’s animate and inanimate entities had been discarded as crude and outmoded forms of exploration. Then I read an article about mining in South Africa with the headline, “Mining Firms Discover Old-Timers Can Be Worth Their Weight in Gold”.
The article reported that elderly geologists who were trained prior to the advent of radar, GPS, and 3D computer software are still being employed by major mining companies because these traditional methods still work. They rely upon simple, unaided observations bolstered by a keen understanding of the region’s fauna and flora. For example, termite and ant mounds that rise three feet above the surface because these insects construct their mounds with soil they excavate from the same distance below; bits of gold speckled on a mound is a certain sign that gold is buried below. Likewise, fossilized worm-burrows from prehistoric slugs indicate that there will be no coal in that location because these slugs evolved before coal began to form there. Finally, certain flowers are indicators of soil composition.
I am not a romantic who idealizes times gone by. Nor am I a Luddite who rejects advances in technology on principle. But I am a believer in the wisdom that can be derived from physical contact with materials, stimulating the body’s myriad nerve endings and transporting the information they detect about the ever-changing environment – carrying it speedily to our brains, centers that are naturally endowed with the capacity to process, remember, compare, analyze, and strategize. When information is derived from bodily contacts, they are enhanced with sensual delight, emotional arousal, and spiritual fulfillment.