Why Nomads Believe in Their Prophesies Explaining Natural Phenomena
What if the esoteric-nomadic theories are true and natural phenomena are not what scientists say?
10 years ago, I worked on the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. In quite a recent past, Kazakh people used to be nomads. They still practice prophecies on what happens around in nature.
One extremely cold January day, a local guy tells me, “It is so freezing for seals.”
“Sorry? How can the weather be for something? The science answers the question of why and how it is cold not “for what,” I argued.
“I know what the science says, but Caspian seals, our sacred sea mammals, need severe frosts in January. That’s why we call these cold days seal frosts. We always have freezing days at the end of January.”
He paused and then added, “ When seals give birth, their umbilical cord freezes on ice and easily breaks. There’s no bleeding. Both a mom and a pup stay alive. Pups grow up through winter and when the ice melts, they migrate to the South, where the sea is deep, to spend the summer. We have a lot of dead pups and their moms in mild winters.”
“Quite a weird way to speak about the weather,” I thought and looked at the cold weather with respect. Let it be…
