A Città del Messico, una ventina d'anni fa, un turista americano adocchia in una bottega una sedia fatta a mano dai colori assai vivaci, e poiché gli piace ne chiede il prezzo all'artigiano indiano. “Dieci pesos”. “Se te ne ordino sei, del medesimo modello, che prezzo mi faresti?” “Settantacinque pesos”, risponde l'indiano. “Ma come!” esclama [...]

“Civilisation has emerged only recently – in the past six thousand or so years – and it may yet prove to be an unsuccessful experiment.” (Roy Rappaport, “Maladaptation in social systems”, 1977) “The citizens of modern complex societies usually do not realize that we are an anomaly of history. Throughout the several million years that [...]

In China, where a comprehensive system was developed for waste salvage even in the ancient times, fertilization with faeces was an important element of the agriculture even many thousand years ago. Productivity of the alluvial plain in the eastern part of the country has been maintained in this way for over 4,000 years. In several [...]