Page 158 - Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors, Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors. Vol. 1

every day. Man is unable to create a fat supply for four months; he also cannot hiber-
nate like a bear. In winter many birds fly away southward, just like many animals
leave for warmer lands. Most fish go into hibernation, and those which do not, appear
to be hidden under the ice which sometimes is very thick. Certainly, some animals
and birds remain, but they are not easy prey. They mimic, acquiring a protective col-
ouration, and can move pretty quickly even on deep snow, which man cannot do.
Man also cannot rely on hunting to feed his family during winter-time. He can possi-
bly survive one year, maybe two or three, but in the end he will kill all the game in
the neighbourhood or the animals will go away and that will be the end — man will
be doomed to starvation. And if there is more than one family, a small or big com-
munity, to survive only by hunting becomes impossible. Also, we should not forget
about predators which do not leave for warmer lands, the most dangerous of them are
wolves which in winter gather together in hordes and become very aggressive.

Thus, the Temperate Zone challenges man with a pretty complicated problem:
how can he feed himself and his family during the late autumn, the whole winter and
the beginning of spring? And the further north, the longer this period. Indeed, what
can one do for a living, if hunting can be only an auxiliary means to get food, not the
main one, because of its quite unpredictable results? There are too many different ob-
jective and subjective factors which influence it. But one wants to eat every day, es-
pecially children whose organisms grow and require food. In winter the coniferous
and mixed forests are not the African savanna where quite recently numberless herds
of artiodactyls and other mammals, and not only them, wandered the whole year
round.

So, man faces a very serious problem — how does he manage to live till the
warm time of the year? And here there is a situation where the passive type of adapta-
tion just does not work. Sure, man would be very glad to take anything from nature,
but little is possible. In this situation there are two options:

1. To migrate to warm lands following animals and birds.

2. To create food supplies for the whole of the cold period.
Migration right after the animals does not require transition to the active type of
adaptation to the ecological system, but this way of life is possible only in the vast
spaces of steppes with insufficient moisture, where there are no big rivers, lakes and
impassable bogs. Some clans of the white race which dwelt there did just so — they

migrated to the south. Thus, they had, mainly, the passive type of adaptation, how-
ever, with already pretty substantial differences from the tribes of the black race
which developed the African savanna, where there is almost no need to migrate from
one place to another.
In order to migrate to warm lands, the man of the Temperate Zone must move as
fast as the migratory animals which man himself is unable to do. He cannot cover
large distances with the speed of the artiodactyls, not to mention small children,
women, old and sick people; we can add to this the necessity to transport some prop-
erty, tools and hunting weapons. Therefore, to solve this problem, the clans of the
white race tried to domesticate some species of the artiodactyls — horses, cows and

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