Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanomamo and the AnthropologistsThe most controversial and famous anthropologist of our time describes his seminal lifelong research among the Yanomamö Indians of the Amazon basin and how his startling observations provoked admiration among many fellow anthropologists and outrage among others. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC MEMOIRS OF OUR TIME When Napoleon Chagnon arrived in Venezuela’s Amazon region in 1964 to study the Yanomamö Indians, one of the last large tribal groups still living in isolation, he expected to find Rousseau’s “noble savages,” so-called primitive people living contentedly in a pristine state of nature. Instead Chagnon discovered a remarkably violent society. Men who killed others had the most wives and offspring, their violence possibly giving them an evolutionary advantage. The prime reasons for violence, Chagnon found, were to avenge deaths and, if possible, abduct women. When Chagnon began publishing his observations, some cultural anthropologists who could not accept an evolutionary basis for human behavior refused to believe them. Chagnon became perhaps the most famous American anthropologist since Margaret Mead—and the most controversial. He was attacked in a scathing popular book, whose central allegation that he helped start a measles epidemic among the Yanomamö was quickly disproven, and the American Anthropological Association condemned him, only to rescind its condemnation after a vote by the membership. Throughout his career Chagnon insisted on an evidence-based scientific approach to anthropology, even as his professional association dithered over whether it really is a scientific organization. In Noble Savages, Chagnon describes his seminal fieldwork—during which he lived among the Yanomamö, was threatened by tyrannical headmen, and experienced an uncomfortably close encounter with a jaguar—taking readers inside Yanomamö villages to glimpse the kind of life our distant ancestors may have lived thousands of years ago. And he forcefully indicts his discipline of cultural anthropology, accusing it of having traded its scientific mission for political activism. This book, like Chagnon’s research, raises fundamental questions about human nature itself. |
Contents
Introduction | 68 |
Bringing My Family to Yanomamoland | 99 |
First Contact with New Yanomamo Villages | 130 |
Geography Lesson | 176 |
From Fieldwork to Science | 196 |
Conflicts over Women | 247 |
Yanomamo Social Organization | 314 |
Three Headmen of Authority | 334 |
Confrontation with the Salesians | 404 |
Darkness in Cultural Anthropology | 423 |
Acknowledgments | 436 |
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Common terms and phrases
Amazon Amazon Basin arrows asked axes Bakotawa began Bisaasi-teri blood samples Brazilian Brewer brothers called camp canoe Caracas Chagnon club fight conflicts cross cousins cultural anthropologists Dedeheiwa difficult downstream dugout earlier example feast females fertile crescent field field research fieldwork fighting film find findings fire first fissioned five gardens genealogies hammock headman human infanticide informants Iwahikoroba-teri jungle Kaobawa Karina killed kinship knew large number learned lineage lived machetes Mahekodo-teri male marriage Matowa Mavaca River measles Mishimishimabowei-teri missionaries Moawa Monou-teri name taboo Neel Neel’s night nomohori Ocamo official Orinoco Orinoco River Padre Cocco Parima Patanowa-teri political polygyny Puerto Ayacucho raharas raid raiders reproductive Rerebawa Salesian mission scientific sexual shabono shotgun Sibarariwa’s village social sociobiology specific teri told took tribal tribes Tribes Mission tribesmen trip uncontacted unokais Venezuelan wanted warfare wife wives women Yano Yanomamo villages Ye’kwana young