40 Lost Self-Reliance Skills That Kept Our Forefathers Alive

For most of human history daily life has been about surviving to live another day. And over the course of millennia humans got pretty good at it, mastering countless of skills in the process.

These skills weren’t “survival skills” as we regard them today, but rather what our ancestors called “daily life”. Below you’ll find a list of some essential skills, some ancient and some more recent, used by our forefathers to survive – but which now has been largely forgotten.

When you think about it, the matter of survival is not that different today from 500 years ago, or even 5,000 years ago.

Our bodies look and behave like the bodies of our ancestors millennia ago. Our brains have also essentially remained unaltered for millennia. And the six things that killed humans 5,000 years ago are the same six things that kill people today.

What Our Ancestors Were Up Against

The six threats to your life, as categorized by global resilience expert Vinay Gupta, are:

1. Getting too hot

2. Getting too cold

3. Thirst

4. Hunger

5. Illness

6. Injury

To survive, our ancestors developed skills to protect them from these threats. They learned how to make fire to stay warm. They built shelter to protect them from harsh weather. They mastered hunting and learned how to find and purify water. They learned which plants they could eat, which plants could be used to treat wounds and illness and which plants would kill. They learned how to avoid crossing paths with bad guys and, if needed, how to kill bad guys.

But daily life back then was not only about surviving. I’m sure people were just as happy back then as we are today. In some ways, I even think people had less worries then. No bills to pay, no need to get up early in the morning and drive to a work you hate, no need to yearn for yet another consumer gadget or luxury out of your reach. Work for them was about surviving, and the rest was all play.

This skill development took place over hundreds of generations of trial and error, and when it comes to “trial and error” in survival the ones who “erred” died and served as a lesson to the rest.

A family poses with the wagon in which they live and travel daily during their pursuit of a homestead, 1886.

Many of these “survival skills”, or life skills as I prefer to call them, were common knowledge up until just a few generations ago. In the past century so much knowledge has been lost. But much has been gained too, of course. Today, we require an entirely new set of skills to get by, but at the expense of our ancient know-how.

These skills that kept our forefathers alive are forgotten today in the sense that they’re no longer general knowledge. They’ve been forgotten because modern humans require another set of skills to survive, like how to make a steady income, drive a car, and stay on the right side of the law.

Modern lifestyle has turned people into highly-dependent beings; whether it’s dependency towards the car, towards the supermarkets, towards politicians, towards centralized infrastructure, you name it – it’s there in the majority of people in the developed world.

Aside from a precious few who have gone out of their way to learn basic survival skills, most of us today would be utterly hopeless if we were plopped in the middle of a forest or jungle and suddenly forced to fend for ourselves using only the resources around us. To our ancient ancestors, we’d appear as helpless as babies.

Our modern infrastructure shields us from threats to our lives, and as long as everything works it’s all fine and dandy. But, as countless examples from history and more recent times show, when you’re dependent on things outside of your control and these things stop working then the people affected by the disruption or disaster are in for a rude awakening.

A part of me feels in the core of my being that it’s a bad idea to totally discard these forgotten skills of our forefathers. Not quite yet, anyway.

Now let’s jump into the skills. It’s simple, you’ll find a long list of skills and underneath a few questions about each skill, the first ones that popped up in my head. Questions I bet most people wouldn’t be able to answer.

Shelter

Shelter protects you from getting too hot or too cold. As Vinay Gupta notes, “Shelter refers not just to the home, but to the essential services like power, cooling, heating and so on that make it habitable year round. Not all homes have these services, and not all climates require them”. Here are some skills our ancestors mastered in this area:

Building a fire

• How do you find dry wood in a wet forest?
• How do you find wood in winter?
• Which trees will give most heat and burn the cleanest?
• How do you build a fire to last all night?
• How do you make fire by friction?
• How do you make fire using flint and steel?

Building shelter

• How do I quickly set up a shelter in the wilderness using no tools?
• What kind of shelter is most suited for my climate and location?
• What material should I use?
• How do I build a roof that doesn’t leak?
• How do I patch a leaking roof?
• How do I insulate the home?
• How do I make plaster? And how do I make the plaster stick to the wall?
• How do I build a fireplace and chimney?

Making Clothes from Scratch

• Which plants in nature can be turned into fibre and threads used for sewing?
• How do I turn cotton, hemp or flax into a textile?
• How do I turn the wool that’s growing on a sheep into a warm shirt?
• How do I weave?
• How do I knit?
• How do I make leather from animal hide? 
• How, and from what material, can I make a needle?
• How do I make shoes?

Blacksmithing

• How do I build a forge?
• Where can I find quality iron ore?
• How do I turn ore into iron?
• How do I turn iron into steel?
• How do I turn a slab of iron into X?
• How do I harden a metal with heat treatment?

Knife making

• How do I make a knife from stone?
• How do I make a knife from steel?
• How do I harden a knife blade to make it keep an edge better?
• How do I sharpen a dull knife?
• How do I keep the knife from rusting?

Carpentry

• How do I build a chair?
• How do I build a door?
• How do I make door hinges?
• How do I repair X around the house?
• How do I assemble an IKEA book shelf? (just kidding!)

Masonry

• How do I make mortar?
• How do I make bricks?
• How do I make cement?
• How do I turn solid bedrock into uniform stone blocks that I can build things with?
• How do I build something durable without using mortar? (dry set masonry)
• How do I build a self-supporting vault?

Heating with Firewood

• What tree makes the best firewood?
• How do I select which trees to fell?
• What are the essential tools for firewood production?
• How do I stack the firewood for optimum drying conditions?
• These questions are all answered in an Execution Plan for Self-Reliance 365 members

Food

A reliable and regular supply of food is a true necessity of life. These essential supplies are provided in very different ways in different parts of the world. Chances are you get your food from a supermarket. Well, here’s a sobering fact: If food trucks stopped delivering to your supermarket, for example due to a natural disaster or financial meltdown, the store shelves will be empty within 48 hours. So it might just be worth it to learn some of the skills below.

Baking bread

• How do I make flour?
• How do I “make” yeast?
• How do I bake bread without electricity?

Making butter

• How do I turn cream into butter?
• What’s the most effective type of butter churn?
• How do I make butter last longer?

Cheese making

• How do I turn milk into cheese?
• How do I make curdled cheese?
• How do I process the curds into hard and soft cheeses?
• How do I ripen the cheese?
• How do I store cheese to make it last longer?

Cooking from scratch

• How do I cook without electricity?
• How do I cook using a dutch oven?
• How do I cook over an open fire?
• How do I make something taste good without following a recipe?
• What spices should I use when?

Tracking and Hunting Animals

• How do I track down an animal?
• What animal does this footprint / pile of crap belong to?
• How do I kill it?

Fishing

• How do I make a fishing net?
• How, and from what materials, can I make a decent fish hook?
• Which baits work?
• Which natural materials can I use as fishing line?
• Where do I find the fish?
• How do I tie a fly?

Trapping

• What animals can I catch using traps?
• How do I build a deadfall trap?
• How do I build a trapping pit?
• How do I make a snare, and where should I place it?
• How do I catch an animal alive?
• What can I use to lure the animal into the trap?

Processing small animals and fish

• How do I gut and clean X animal?

Butchering

• Which parts can I eat and which parts should I throw away?
• How should I cut the meat?
• How should I package it?
• How do I make minced meat?
• How do you skin an animal without destroying the hide?

Archery

• What’s the best wood for bow making?
• How do I make a bow that won’t get brittle and break as the wood dries?
• How do I turn a tree into a bow?
• What material can I use for string?
• How are arrows made?
• What material can I use to make arrow tips?
• How do I build the arrows to help them fly straight?

Gun Smithing

• How do I manufacture a rifle?
• How do I make gunpowder?
• How do I disassemble, clean, inspect, lubricate & reassemble a gun?

Gardening

• What kind of plants / vegetables / root crops / berries / fruits can I grow in my area?
• How do I know when to plant things?
• How do I make compost?
• How do I minimize weeds?
• Can I eat the weeds?
• How do I make biochar?
• How do I get started?

Orchard Management

• How do I plant a tree to give it the best possible start in life?
• How do I prune a tree?
• How do I propagate trees through seeds?
• How do I propagate trees through grafting?
• How do I manage diseases and pests?

Seed Saving

• How do I save seeds from X plant?
• How do I store seeds?
• How do I stratify seeds to get them to germinate better?

Home Brewing

• How do I make beer / wine / mead?
• From where can I get the yeast?
• How do I save the yeast until next time?
• How do I control the alcohol percentage?

Foraging / Knowing What to Eat

• What wild plants, berries, fruits, roots, nuts and mushrooms grow in my area that I can eat without getting killed?
• Which of them are in season now?

Preserving food

• How do I can food?
• How do I dehydrate food?
• How do I ferment food?
• How do I smoke food?
• How do I salt food?

Animal husbandry

Raising dogs and cats is much different than raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, pigs, cows, and goats for the table. For all of these animals there are a number of questions one needs to have a grip on. A large part of being able to raise these animals is recognizing their needs and being able to diagnose their sicknesses.

• What do they need in terms of food, water, shelter, etc., to stay healthy and live a good life?
• What diseases are they prone to and how do you treat them?
• How do I fence them in?
• How do I milk a cow / goat?
• How do I help deliver a foal / piglet?

Bee keeping

• How do I build a hive?
• How do I capture a bee swarm?
• How do I harvest the honey without getting stung?
• What plants are beneficial for bees?

Water

A reliable and regular supply of water is a true necessity of life. These essential supplies are provided in very different ways in different parts of the world. In the developed world you likely get your water from a tap; a relatively new invention and far from resilient.

Finding Drinking Water

• What are the best places to find drinkable water?
• How do I know if it’s drinkable?
• What can I do to minimize the risk of drinking foul water?

Purifying water

• In what ways can I purify water?
• How do I make active charcoal for water purification?

Well Building

• How do I build a durable well?
• How do I know where to start digging?

Moving water with gravity

• How do I move water from place A to place B using only gravity?
• How do I move water uphill without using electricity?

Safety

Protection from illness is today provided by health care, hospitals, sanitation infrastructure such as flush toilets. Protection from injury is provided by police, security services and the military. In theory anyway. Before modern times, people and communities took responsibility for their own personal protection.

Here are some skills that will help protect you from both injury and illness:

Staying out of harms way

• How do I avoid getting into fights?
• How do I avoid getting robbed?
• How do I defuse a situation that could turn ugly?

Handling a gun

• How do I safely handle a gun?
• How do I hold a gun properly?
• How do I aim a gun?
• How do I reload a gun?
• How do I maintain a gun?

Hand-to-hand fighting

• How do I throw a punch?
• Where should I aim?
• How do I avoid getting punched?
• How do I hold a person?
• How do I disable a person in the quickest amount of time?
• How do I defend against a knife attacker?

Perimeter Security

• How do I choose a strong defensive position?
• How do I harden structures against intruders?

First aid

• How do I clean and disinfect a wound?
• How do I dress a wound?
• How do I stop heavy bleeding?
• How do I perform CPR?
• How do I splint a broken leg / hand / finger / toe / back / neck?
• How do I close an open wound using suturing?

Making soap

• What materials do I need to make soap?

Herbal medicine

• Which plants can I use to treat X?
• How do I turn those plants into usable extracts, oils, balms, teas and tinctures?

Waste Management

• How do I safely handle human waste when the flush toilet stops working?
• How do I turn what I usually flush down the sewers into high quality humanure and compost?