Chaos As Social Order

account the fact well-attested by older Athabascan speakers that sounds once used in these highly agglutinative, rhythmical, and guttural languages have already disappeared or are too difficult for contemporary speakers to reproduce.  Along with a dying out of vocal ranges, the disappearance of a once well-marked distinction between a formal style of oratory and ceremony, and a vernacular style of everyday affairs, is affirmed by the same speakers.  The appearance of a “village English” further attests to the mixing ground with English in which the Athabascan languages are fading into a silent hue of memory.

            It is instructive, before trying to tie any of this to chaos theory, to note that the Interior Athabascans used to make rope from spruce roots, and heavy sewing twine–babiche–from moose skin.  They also used to catch fish in bent willow traps, shoot birds with bows and arrows, and kill charging bears on wooden spears with fire-hardened points.  Most of the older, non-metal technology has either completely disappeared or become pastime, show-piece, museum piece, or story line.  The newer technology, based on the metal, chemical, and plastic industries, has made all of the older tasks much safer in terms of risk to life and limb, easier and more efficient in terms of human exertion, more reliable in terms of success per attempt, and more productive in terms of quantities gained.  The newer Athabascan languages, derived from the older ones and adapted to a context in which information processing and transfer are far more important than reverence, ceremony, and maintenance of taboo, seem also to be becoming easier to learn and simpler in use.

            The attractor of Athabascan culture

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