Lynn says this book "grapples deeply with the question of where we as a species are headed if we do not recognize the value in diversity in both human settlements and in the natural ecosystems they depend on. "

A gripping portrait of the western Himalayan land sometimes known as “Little Tibet,” Ancient Futures opens with author Helena Norberg-Hodge’s first visit in 1975 to idyllic, preindustrial Ladakh. She then tracks the profound changes that occurred as the region was opened to foreign tourists and Western goods and technologies, and offers a firsthand account of how relentless pressure for economic growth precipitated generational and religious conflict, unemployment, inflation, and environmental damage, threatening to unravel Ladakh’s traditional way of life.

Energized by the fate of a people who had captured her heart, Norberg-Hodge helped establish the Ladakh Project (later renamed the International Society for Ecology and Culture) to seek sustainable solutions that preserve cultural integrity and environmental health while addressing the hunger for modernization. Since then, other Ladakh-based projects have proliferated, supporting renewable energy systems, local agricultural methods, and the spiritual foundations of Ladakhi culture.

The author’s new afterword brings readers up-to-date on the work of these projects and on her own career over several decades as she traveled widely, observing similar impacts on other cultures. She challenges us to rethink our concepts of “development” and “progress,” stressing above all the need to carry ancient wisdom into our future.

Lynn says: 

"This book is a veritable love-letter to and from Ladakh (known as 'Little Tibet') and its people who are astoundingly attuned to its difficult landscape.  I was led to this book along a circuitous path, having heard about Norberg-Hodge's work years ago at a Permaculture Convergence in New Mexico, then more recently having seen "The Economics of Happiness", a film she narrates about Ladakh's resistance to economic globalization's impacts on its culture. Her book, Ancient Futures grapples deeply with the question of where we as a species are headed if we do not recognize the value in diversity in both human settlements and in the natural ecosystems they depend on.  Norberg-Hodge (recipient of the 'alternative Nobel') has made it her life's work to protect and affirm what remains of one culture's profound sensitivity to our shared human predicament of having the capacity to utterly lose or develop our localized, place-based ethics.   In addition she plants the seeds of a reawakening to our place IN place and a rethinking of 'end of history' assumptions about how human beings can work in tandem with rather than in separation from, and merely dominating or commodifying the natural world."