and we are so behind...life on earth will continue, but not necessarily with mankind.

Man understanding nature deeply enough to be able to harness her strength without harming her. Compared to building a concrete bridge, so very much better for the environment. People used to understand and respect nature because their very lives depended on it.

“Two decades ago, while researching her doctoral thesis, ecologist Suzanne Simard discovered that trees communicate their needs and send each other nutrients via a network of latticed fungi buried in the soil — in other words, she found, they “talk” to each other

.Simard now believes large trees help out small, younger ones using the fungal internet. Without this help, she thinks many seedlings wouldn't survive. In the 1997 study, seedlings in the shade – which are likely to be short of food - got more carbon from donor trees.

"These plants are not really individuals in the sense that Darwin thought they were individuals competing for survival of the fittest," says Simard in the 2011 documentary Do Trees Communicate? "In fact they are interacting with each other, trying to help each other survive."

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet


“I'm walking in the Eifel Mountains in western Germany, through cathedral-like groves of oak and beech, and there’s a strange unmoored feeling of entering a fairy tale. The trees have become vibrantly alive and charged with wonder. They’re communicating with one another, for starters. They’re involved in tremendous struggles and death-defying dramas. To reach enormousness, they depend on a complicated web of relationships, alliances and kinship networks.

Wise old mother trees feed their saplings with liquid sugar and warn the neighbors when danger approaches. Reckless youngsters take foolhardy risks with leaf-shedding, light-chasing and excessive drinking, and usually pay with their lives. Crown princes wait for the old monarchs to fall, so they can take their place in the full glory of sunlight. It’s all happening in the ultra-slow motion that is tree time, so that what we see is a freeze-frame of the action.”

“There is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that refutes that idea. It shows instead that trees of the same species are communal, and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony. These soaring columns of living wood draw the eye upward to their outspreading crowns, but the real action is taking place underground, just a few inches below our feet.

“Some are calling it the ‘wood-wide web,’” says Wohlleben in German-accented English. “All the trees here, and in every forest that is not too damaged, are connected to each other through underground fungal networks. Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages.”

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-

... ecologist Suzanne Simard should not misquote like "Darwin thought they were individuals competing for survival of the fittest". That IS the very popular interpretation of Darwin's work, but he actually would have agreed with Simard that "In fact they are interacting with each other, trying to help each other survive".

"Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring", said Darwin. He also noted that cooperation is far more important than competition in the working of natural systems. For more about this, read the great Russian anarchist Pjotr Kropotkin's book: "Mutual Aid".

Darwin is very misunderstood by non-scientists.

If only people could learn to work together like that for the greater good of humanity

Humans are sadly lacking in recognizing that there is so much more intelligence operating in the world, universe, than ours.

The very idea of older trees taking the young ones under their care is so amazing.

Thank you for posting..never knew that these bridges existed. Incredible.. thanks again

Stuart

handles. They would take a stone and chisel an edge. Then they would chisel an indentation along the opposite edge of the stone. A root would be wrapped around the indented circumference. Then the stone with root would be buried for a couple of years.

When the stone with root was excavated, the root handle would be securely wrapped around the stone. Examples of chiseled stone can still be found along Sussex County, N.J. sections of the Delaware.

I hope I explained this clearly.

Amazing idea.

Thanks, 3Hotdogs.

We would find net sinkers. These were stones that were worked and fitted around vines. Those vines would grow for only a few months and then be twisted around other vines to make nets to trap shad fish as they traveled up the Delaware to spawn.

The net sinker stones would be on the bottom of the tangle of vines.

We always found a couple of net sinkers. The ax handles were rare. We would also find hide scrapers.

Typically such techniques develop very slowly, generation by generation, each one tweaking an idea to improve it. My guess is that people first made bridges out of vines, and learned over time how to keep them alive and harness their power.