#heronarrative — Public Fediverse posts

Forest guardians

One settler narrative is 4000 years old and has the spoiler:
Stop cutting down forests.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is ancient Mesopotamian literature written on cuneiform tablets. Uruk was an ancient settlement of civilisation on the Euphrates river. Growth soon burst their urban growth boundaries.

The 'conquering hero narrative' to fix the 'problem' has endured over the 4000 years in all our storytelling, texts or rich media.

Gilgamesh’s journey led him into the surrounding forests to fight Humbaba, the guardian of the rich biodiversity of old growth forests.

On the way, he and his companion Enkidu had a dream when they heard Humbaba bellowing. The dream was about falling mountains, floods, desertification, thunderstorms and bushfires. Ignoring these nightmares they pushed on with their quest and massacred Humbaba, the defender and custodian of the ancient forest.

Gilgamesh was seeking lasting fame and he knew that his community's hunger for timber and growth implied consent for his actions. And so cities continued to spread and grow all over the planet.

#NativeForests #NSWLogging #logging #history #literature #Mesopotamia #Gilgamesh #hero #narrative #HeroNarrative #violence #extractivism #bushfires #floods #desertification #DustStorms #Urbanisation #SettlerSocieties #Sprawl #growth #expansion #nature #extinctions #climate #biodiversity