Bakhtiari-3 (Bronowski)

Who knows, in any one year, whether the old when they have crossed the passes will be able to face the final test: the crossing of the Bazoft River ?

Three months of melt-water have swollen [the river].
The tribesmen, the pack animals, the women, and the flocks are all exhausted. It will take a day to manhandle the flocks across the river.

The head of the family has worked seven years, as Jacob did, to build a flock of fifty sheep and goats. He expects to lose ten of them in the migration if things go well.

If they go badly, he may lose twenty out of his flock of fifty.
Those are the odds of the nomad life, year in and year out.
And beyond that, at the end of the journey, there will still be nothing except an immense, traditional resignation.



But this, here, now is the testing day. Today is the day on which the young become men, because the survival of the herd and the family depends on their strength. Crossing the Bazoft River is like crossing the Jordan; it is the baptism to man¬hood.

For the young man, life for a moment comes alive here.
And for the old - for the old, it dies. What happens to the old when they cannot cross the last river ?

Nothing.They stay behind to die.Only the dog is puzzled to see a man abandoned.The man accepts the nomad custom; he has come to the end of his journey.

The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture.What made that possible ?An act of will by men, surely; but with that, a strange and secret act of nature.

At the end of the Ice Age, a hybrid wheat appeared in the Middle East.It happened in many places: a typical one is the ancient oasis of Jericho.