Ever notice all the new schools and workshops popping up, offering to teach primitive or old, ancient survival techniques? In a world of convenience and technology, it can be easy to disregard the very skills we once needed long ago to meet our most basic, essential needs. However, some survival skills are still extremely valuable to know, and learning them can leave you with a feeling of self-confidence in a world of uncertainty. Read on to find out what 5 ancient skills you should really learn.
Skill Number 1: Growing Your Own Food
Even if you just start out small with growing a few herbs and vegetables on a small plot, learning to grow any food on your own is a vital, ancient skill to know. People have been skilled in growing their own food beyond the records of history. And when you harvest and eat the food you have grown yourself, you can be happy to know that you are taking steps towards being more sustainable. There are many ways for you to learn. One of the best ways is to find a community garden or urban farm that you can volunteer at, so you can continue to improve those food growing-skills.
Skill Number 2: Foraging for Food
The rise of industry may have taken away the demand for this skill, but it is still a skill of great worth. Learning how to properly forage for food will not only help you survive possible food shortages, but it can also help you when you are stranded or in the process of waiting for your food to grow in a desolate area. Knowing how to forage means being able to notice what you should eat in the wilderness, and what you shouldn’t eat. It requires you to understand that not everything in nature should be consumed, and this is where spending the time to understand how to forage comes in handy. I feel there is something very empowering about knowing how and where to find food when you need it, no matter what.
Skill 3: Procuring Drinking Water
Obtaining drinking water is another valuable survival skill to learn because water is life. If you are in an area with no drinking water, knowing the skill of where and how to collect or find clean drinking water could prevent you from dehydration or even death. A person who is knowledgeable in this skill may know things such as different ways of collecting rain water where to find water in the desert, or the best water natural sources to drink from.
Skill 4: Building a Fire
If you are somewhere where it’s cold and there is absolutely nothing available to help provide you with the amount of heat needed to keep your body from freezing, knowing how to build a fire is essential. Taking the time to learn skill fire-building skills could save you from freezing to death. There are many ways build a fire, and its best to learn how to do this both with and without the use of lighters or matches—in case you have none when you need to start a fire.
Skill 5: Building Shelter
Lastly, we come to the important skill of shelter building. Shelters can provide you with protection from various outsides forces in nature. It’s a good survival skill to know in any environment. Throughout centuries, people have made different types of shelters out of all kinds of things like branches, leaves, sticks, mud, and even ice. Combined with knowing how to build a shelter, you should know the best locations to place your shelter too.
These five survival skills are great because they can help you stay alive as well as become more independent. Food, water, shelter, and warmth are all very essential to helping us stay alive. Even just knowing a little about each of these skills is a lot better than knowing nothing at all. The good news is there are plenty of resources out there today that can help you learn these five survival skills and more.
