Epilogue: a millenarian culture is disappearing
As human beings we are witnessing an important moment in our ethno-botanical and ethno-ecological history. It is no exaggeration to say that, at least in the more privileged countries, the last generation of people who are closely in touch with nature and the environment is coming to an end. Our children and grandchildren, will most certainly be unaware of these past ways of life, of popular folklore; they will not the same traditional agrarian landscapes. They will only be able to imagine them in museums and libraries.
Other worlds will come or have already arrived, and they are equally interesting and groundbreaking, but they are different. Because although human genius and creativity will dominate, there is no doubt that globalisation is finishing off a millenarian culture, which is disappearing forever, and we do not know what consequences and losses this will bring. Evaluating losses in, for example, ethno-varieties of crops or uses of plants and landscapes will be our task in the future.
The ingenious generation, the generation that lived directly from nature, co-existing with her in harmony and intelligence, the generation that used only their hands and their brains to create, will not be the same in countries like ours. Now we only know how to press buttons, or phone someone to come and fix things; now the brain chooses from the options offered by machines, the web or the internet (which are not to be sniffed at), but the creativity of facing nature with no answers, or creating with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper is no longer in fashion and is rarely seen. And it is here where ethno-botanical research has a lot to say, as such and as working tools for the Science of Human Ecology, and interdisciplinary synthesis of all the sciences. This Exhibition is an example.
Our final epilogue to these roughly-sketched ideas are the photos of José Antonio Pineda’s timeworn hands tying a broom of heather (Calluna vulgaris) with a strip of bramble (Rubus ulmifolius s.l.), of Jesús González García from Navalosa (Ávila) sitting on a bench in a district in a big city and waiting for Spring to come so that his children take him back to his village. In winter, Jesús passes the time making miniature baskets with sticks and branches of Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila), which he himself gathers and prepares; and he makes small, toy, wooden yokes for cows with his penknife, which he gives to the people he chats to in the park. They have changed his traditional beret for a typical Irish or Central European cap made by kangaroo.