Anywho, some linguists project that by the end of this century, the number of active languages will be about 300. Living in the age we do, though, the roughly 6700 languages that may disappear from use will be quite well documented. Anyone who takes it upon him or herself to learn or study any of these languages will be able to do so.

I think this probably represents the best we can do. Some processes simply transcend management, and I’d certainly put the interaction of cultures into that group. That which falls out of active use becomes the purview of academia.

Edit: I should probably have said the languages *may* be well documented. The are still some that have no written counterpart, and those could be problematic. Others may simply escape adequate documentation.

His point was that regardless of what other benefits and advantages space travel might provide mankind, the greatest (in his opinion) was that it would separate mankind into little communities far from one another, in very different environments. Each would face different challenges, with relatively limited contact with one another. Humanity would be adaptable, but it would not be a uniform adaptation to one environment, we would become diverse and flexible, and explore many different paths and histories. It would be impossible to exterminate us. No single catastrophe, like climate change, could wipe us all out.

He felt as a global civilization we would become culturally inbred and overspecialized, like thoroughbreds or show dogs, and we would be unable to adapt to changes in our environment. With one language, one culture, one religion, one philosophy, one way of seeing the world, we would have no way of realizing how genetically and culturally we had degenerated, because we would have no one else to compare ourselves to.

By Neolithic times, we had conquered every environment on this planet, the deserts, the forests, the alpine and Arctic wastes, the tundra and the selva, the savanna and the steppes and the scattered archipelagos of the Pacific. And we did it with stone tools, and in small bands.

Even with all our technology, we can’t live in any of those places today without being plugged into the entire global techno-industrial process. We can visit the bottom of the sea, or the icecap in Antarctica, or the surface of the planets, but we have to bring everything we need with us. We have forgotten how to live off the land.

Our ideal condition as a species, the one that offers the best insurance for long term survival, is the ability to live in multiple environments, but to still be able to communicate with and even travel to others, so our knowledge can be shared. That’s how life and evolution works. Specialization is NOT for insects, they are the most varied and diverse taxon on the planet–and the most successful. WE are the ones who are becoming trapped in an evolutionary dead end.

The global village is starting to look awfully small and monotonous. A Swedish office worker is not that different from a Samoan one. You’re right. There may be nothing we can do for these little pockets of aborigines, no matter how much we may want to help and treasure them. Eventually they will be absorbed, and hopefully, they will prosper by it. But we may not be doing them any favours.

Read the comments in the original article, and see if you can spot them.

That said, the ability of humans to evolve culturally, and not just physically, is the main reason we thrive in so many environments. The humans living in the Arctic discarded forever all those ways of life they needed when they lived in a warm environment. Chinese culture, Swedish culture, Inuit culture, Polynesian culture … the list goes on for miles. None of them are living the way their ancestors did before they entered that environment. A way of life is a tool of survival, and when it stops being useful, humans leave it behind for the same reasons whales left legs behind, only a lot faster. This ability is our species’ greatest strength.

There is nothing inherently valuable about a culture, except as a learning tool to teach us how one particular environment was dealt with by our adaptable species. Thousands of cultures went by the wayside long before there were academics to study them, and we only know about some of them at all through the remains of ancient arts and technologies.

Let these Amazonian people and their children make their own choices about their futures. Nobody should try to force them to discard their own culture (as has often happened), but nobody should force them to remain in it, either. I only wish there was some way to inoculate them against diseases quietly from the air.