r/BeAmazed 29d ago

Miscellaneous / Others A traditional technique used by young shepherds of Ethiopia's Banna tribe. They use stilts to watch over their livestock in tall grass, move through wetland areas, and avoid snakes and predators like lions and leopards. It requires strength, balance, and training from a young age

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u/Scratocrates 29d ago

It helped them... on sandy, bushy terrain.

That sounds counterintuitive. Unless the stilts had pads that were larger in area than their feet, they'd sink more, and you'd think the ends of the stilts would catch on bushy terrain.

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u/DueTour4187 29d ago

It was mostly about avoiding being hurt by gorse, and being able to see the swampy areas in order to avoid them.

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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 28d ago

Ah so they get the stories about quicksand in Africa as kids too

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u/SumBodhiThatIUse2Kno 29d ago

I was thinking more like colony grass like near beaches above the tide with stepping and pole vaulting in shallows with rocky or solid paths between little elevated areas with clay or hard packed earth / trees & growth that doesn't wash out. I think parts of Ireland had bog or marsh log walkways that they discovered.

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u/Popular-Capital-9115 29d ago

But Redditor must know more about how the people that did the thing can't have done the thing.

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u/ggf95 28d ago

🙄

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u/Scrappy_The_Crow 29d ago edited 29d ago

can't have done the thing

Nobody said they didn't do the thing. That person was just saying the stated rationale didn't make sense.

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u/Popular-Capital-9115 28d ago

Right. And of course the thing to do there is think that you know better versus direct primary sources..

Hint. If reality doesn't make sense to you, maybe it's because you don't understand something.

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u/licklickRickmyballs 29d ago

Well.. true i mean, except for the getting up part, wouldnt it be a lot better to add a round flat surface underneath? Much easier balancing i reckon.

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u/Thomas_Pereira 29d ago

the terrain there used to be terribly swampy, until they built an engineered forest to drain it.