From whence we come

Words like 'pathos' spring out at one as I continue to read and enjoy the Dinesen book "Out of Africa". How superior to the romanticised film version is the book with its detailed accounts of the immigrant farmer  and her handling of the day to day events on the farm and her incisive reasoning regarding the principle players in life on the farm.

She touches on the historical aspects of the Arab trade in African people up and down the East African coast. She reasons the that their half brother, the Somali has the skills but lacks their ancient finesse. That the Masai have one ideal, to be separate, aloof from everyone, a warrior nation to match the tradition of the accent Spartans. And then there's the Kikuyu, the sheep, surrounded by the dogs who wished to trade them, patient with no claws or teeth, no power no earthly protector, their destiny in 'other's' hands which could only be accommodated through an immense gift for patient resignation. 

They would not die under the yoke like the Masai or storm against fate like the Somali when they feel cheated or slighted. They were the "goods" in the commerce, the profit and the prestige of their tormentors lay in them themselves, they were the central figures in the chase and the commerce and in this gave them "value" in this sense of themselves.
And so unfurls this microcosm of society, the rich parts that tribal nations play in the conundrum we call life. The traditions are formed not through some sort of natural evolution but through an evolution forced upon them by historical temper and temperament.
In nearly every instance in mankind's evolution trade and commerce brought about a recognition of the nation state or, where no state existed by the tribal state which itself reflected the people who made up the tribe. How these different temperaments are born, what hones them into a recognisable character is as much to do with climate and opportunity as it is any sort of superior genetics but once founded the tradition begets instinct and instinct is the cunning which defines value which is at the root of commerce.
Buy the book and read its pages, slowly, without prejudice. Soak up the complex,  but  deep simplicity of people unspoilt by the jangle of modern life, who survive, when we fall about if and when the power fails !!