In "advanced" countries, we are so awash in "Stuff" (boy I miss Carlin..... I'm about due for another session with him on Ytube....) that it's easy to forget how bad it is...... Reminds me of two stories I came across, and not recently either......
One guy was traveling in Canada's Far North, and had never been anywhere that remote before. Don't remember how they met up, but he ended up heading out on the land with a couple of locals. As they were traveling a fair distance, he was a little surprised at how little Stuff they were loading to take. When he politely raised the topic, the answer was "Don't Worry, we'll be fine.....". Sure enough, even as remote as they were traveling, they was already enough discarded Stuff lying about, that they could readily MacGyver a cookstove, leanto.......
Back when the Wall was still up, a resident decided to walk out of Russia to a bordering country. The logical (and pretty much only route in that area) had something critical missing on the "official" maps of the day...... a very large lake, which was huge enough to deter most people.
Being of sterner material, this guy made the extremely long march around this massive lake. Very remote area with no signage, but he recounted being happy when he arrived in the West...... he could tell he'd made it by the discarded consumer packaging he couldn't recognize along the road.....
I'm never going to study Archeology, but I can see why they zero in on garbage dumps to evaluate.....
Rgds, D.
