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Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes - the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists
The 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.
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.
544 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 19, 2013
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September 10, 2022
A fascinating book about the "fierce people." The Yanomamö—a "demographically pristine" stone age population occupying a remote expanse of the Orinoco straddling Brazil and Venezuela. The author spent 30 years with them and came back with robust comparative data that will never be equaled, since, the Yamamanö are now acculturated. That is, their violent but pristine way of life has by now been diluted or admixed irrevocably by our culture.
Three quarters of the book is about the tribes themselves. Chagnon had to spend years in the field. He started by learning the Yamamanö language from scratch. Eventually, he would discover that it was without precedent. That is, without marked similarities to nearby languages. This suggests the Yamamanö are an exceedingly ancient people, having lived in considerable isolation, perhaps for millennia. Along with the New Guinea Highlanders, they were perhaps the last such pre-contact stone age people to survive into the twentieth century. And Chagnon worked with groups that had never before seen a white man.
There exists among the Yanomamö—a name taboo. Not only is it considered offensive to use the name of someone who has recently died, but even to call a living person by their name out loud is unseemly. Now try to imagine how this affected Chagnon, one of whose tasks was to gather genealogies and censuses. It makes for quite a story, especially when the tribe, the Bisassi-teri, which loved a good scatological joke, deceived him for months on end about the names he was collecting. Naturally, he was furious, but what could he do?
• "On one trip, again with Rerebawä as my guide, we were followed all the way from our canoe to the edge of the village by a jaguar, a walking distance of four hours";
• "The Yanomamö express distance by the number of 'sleeps' it takes to get somewhere";
• The Yanomamö technique of asphyxiating armadillo in their burrows and digging precisely where their quarry has fallen is an astonishing thing to read about;
• "The most vile and vulgar insult you can utter in Yamamanö is 'Wa bei kä he shami!' ('Your forehead is filthy!') Any allusion to blemishes, warts, pimples, etc., on someone's skin, especially on or near the forehead, is potentially insulting."
Then there's the time when a monk from the Salesian Mission asks Chagnon—an atheist—to murder one of the mission's fellows, who, it has been discovered, has sired several children with a Yanomamö woman. Now get this, the proposed murder was seen by the monk, Padre Cocco, as a means of saving the Church from further embarrassment. The Salesians were evil, but Chagnon had to remain on good terms with them if he was to get his work done. The monks would take Yanomamö children downstream to mission encampments "...where they were put into dormitories, taught Spanish, and discouraged from using their own language. They were away from their parents and their villages for months at a time." Moreover, in the ongoing struggle to out perform the Protestant missionaries, the Salesians began giving the Yanomamö—a war-making people previously limited to bows and arrows—shotguns.
Noble Savages is also a book of searing, irrefutable truths, of reputations regained. A book by an author who underwent decades of smears. Here is the bottom line: Chagnon determined empirically that of the men in the many tribes he studied over decades, those who killed one or more enemies on raids, had almost three times greater reproductive success (more wives, more offspring) than those who did not kill. See the fascinating tables on pages 275 and 276.
This, Chagnon's biggest finding, connecting Yanomomö war-making with reproductive success started an academic war. For empirical proof that the Yanomamö went to war over women completely upset the anthropological orthodoxy of the day. That orthodoxy said that the "...theory of human behavior had no room for ideas from biology, reproductive competition, and evolutionary theory." That's right, the cultural anthropologists were anti-science! War in primitive societies, they decreed, had to be due to competition over scarce material resources or a reaction to the repression of the western colonial powers. To say otherwise was "contrary to the prevailing anthropological wisdom derived from Marxism."
Now imagine poor Prof. Chagnon. He was 28 at the time the first of his findings were published, and he faced a backlash from the "purists" who smeared him baselessly and who argued without evidence that he was wrong. But he was not wrong. He was correct. The Yanomomö did indeed go to war over women. Thus, the vast sphere of Cultural Anthropology as it was then defined went to war with itself.
It's still not over.
Three quarters of the book is about the tribes themselves. Chagnon had to spend years in the field. He started by learning the Yamamanö language from scratch. Eventually, he would discover that it was without precedent. That is, without marked similarities to nearby languages. This suggests the Yamamanö are an exceedingly ancient people, having lived in considerable isolation, perhaps for millennia. Along with the New Guinea Highlanders, they were perhaps the last such pre-contact stone age people to survive into the twentieth century. And Chagnon worked with groups that had never before seen a white man.
There exists among the Yanomamö—a name taboo. Not only is it considered offensive to use the name of someone who has recently died, but even to call a living person by their name out loud is unseemly. Now try to imagine how this affected Chagnon, one of whose tasks was to gather genealogies and censuses. It makes for quite a story, especially when the tribe, the Bisassi-teri, which loved a good scatological joke, deceived him for months on end about the names he was collecting. Naturally, he was furious, but what could he do?
• "On one trip, again with Rerebawä as my guide, we were followed all the way from our canoe to the edge of the village by a jaguar, a walking distance of four hours";
• "The Yanomamö express distance by the number of 'sleeps' it takes to get somewhere";
• The Yanomamö technique of asphyxiating armadillo in their burrows and digging precisely where their quarry has fallen is an astonishing thing to read about;
• "The most vile and vulgar insult you can utter in Yamamanö is 'Wa bei kä he shami!' ('Your forehead is filthy!') Any allusion to blemishes, warts, pimples, etc., on someone's skin, especially on or near the forehead, is potentially insulting."
Then there's the time when a monk from the Salesian Mission asks Chagnon—an atheist—to murder one of the mission's fellows, who, it has been discovered, has sired several children with a Yanomamö woman. Now get this, the proposed murder was seen by the monk, Padre Cocco, as a means of saving the Church from further embarrassment. The Salesians were evil, but Chagnon had to remain on good terms with them if he was to get his work done. The monks would take Yanomamö children downstream to mission encampments "...where they were put into dormitories, taught Spanish, and discouraged from using their own language. They were away from their parents and their villages for months at a time." Moreover, in the ongoing struggle to out perform the Protestant missionaries, the Salesians began giving the Yanomamö—a war-making people previously limited to bows and arrows—shotguns.
Noble Savages is also a book of searing, irrefutable truths, of reputations regained. A book by an author who underwent decades of smears. Here is the bottom line: Chagnon determined empirically that of the men in the many tribes he studied over decades, those who killed one or more enemies on raids, had almost three times greater reproductive success (more wives, more offspring) than those who did not kill. See the fascinating tables on pages 275 and 276.
This, Chagnon's biggest finding, connecting Yanomomö war-making with reproductive success started an academic war. For empirical proof that the Yanomamö went to war over women completely upset the anthropological orthodoxy of the day. That orthodoxy said that the "...theory of human behavior had no room for ideas from biology, reproductive competition, and evolutionary theory." That's right, the cultural anthropologists were anti-science! War in primitive societies, they decreed, had to be due to competition over scarce material resources or a reaction to the repression of the western colonial powers. To say otherwise was "contrary to the prevailing anthropological wisdom derived from Marxism."
Now imagine poor Prof. Chagnon. He was 28 at the time the first of his findings were published, and he faced a backlash from the "purists" who smeared him baselessly and who argued without evidence that he was wrong. But he was not wrong. He was correct. The Yanomomö did indeed go to war over women. Thus, the vast sphere of Cultural Anthropology as it was then defined went to war with itself.
It's still not over.
July 14, 2013
This is two books in one. The first describes the author's field research and how he lived among the Yanomamo people in the 1960's and 70's. The second is the reaction his work stirred up and Chagnon's defense against attacks on his work, methods and ethics by anthropologists, missionaries and advocates for indigenous people.
If the first part of the book stood on its own I would not be reviewing the book in such a skeptical fashion. While there are many interesting stories the information given in the first part is not complete suggesting that the second part is not complete either. I'd like to hear the other side of the debate on the author. Here are some of the incomplete issues presented in the first part:
- For about 100 pages you feel that Chagnon is the village's sole "modern man" living among an "untouched" population. Later you learn that his house was actually a 20 X 20 foot extension of Jim Barker's house. Barker was mentioned earlier as a missionary, but not as such a proximate neighbor. No interaction with Barker in this village (is he there?) is described other than that Barker allows Chagnon's kids to play in his fenced in yard where Barker raises chickens.
- While Chagnon claims that the Yanomamo is a heretofore isolated population, about halfway through the book, you learn that the plantain, a large part of their nutrition, was introduced by the Spanish 500 years ago. There is evidence of more contemporary contact such as axes, machetes, rifles and other items given to this "pristine" community before Chagnon's arrival.
- Rky Ward, an anthropology student, is mentioned in passing as being on the visit to Iwahikoroba-teri - a tribe of the Yanomamo that have not been visited by any outsiders. Other than giving Ward's name, this section is written as though Chagnon is a lone adventurer on this long and significant trip.
- What came first, the measles or the measles vaccination program?
- Similarly, and perhaps significantly, in the beginning I wondered about the genealogy research he was doing. As a lay person, I wondered how this fit anthropological methods as I understood them. About 200 pages later it says that the research is funded by the Atomic Energy Commission for reasons (something to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that are not clear.
- The research itself is incomplete. Chagnon is studying genealogies, where and when people were born and how they die. Not one Yanomamo died in childbirth (over several generations) according to his statistics.
- There are no interviews with any woman and no comments on how children are raised. I know more about how Chagnon cooked his food that the Yanomamo.
Chagnon has created some important statistics. Perhaps the limited nature of the work has brought about the criticism. He is stingy with giving credit to others which is a good way to lose the support of those who might be in a position to defend him.
If this book were only about the Yamomamo, despite the issues above I'd give it four stars. It is interesting to hear how an anthropologist lives, builds huts and boats (or has them built for him), learns the language, travels about and how the Yanomamo make war and mourn, and (sadly) how the men treat women. There are lots of photos. As Chignon tells of the criticisms he's received,I couldn't help but think back to the missing links in the first part and consider the other possible ways to look at the issues.
If the first part of the book stood on its own I would not be reviewing the book in such a skeptical fashion. While there are many interesting stories the information given in the first part is not complete suggesting that the second part is not complete either. I'd like to hear the other side of the debate on the author. Here are some of the incomplete issues presented in the first part:
- For about 100 pages you feel that Chagnon is the village's sole "modern man" living among an "untouched" population. Later you learn that his house was actually a 20 X 20 foot extension of Jim Barker's house. Barker was mentioned earlier as a missionary, but not as such a proximate neighbor. No interaction with Barker in this village (is he there?) is described other than that Barker allows Chagnon's kids to play in his fenced in yard where Barker raises chickens.
- While Chagnon claims that the Yanomamo is a heretofore isolated population, about halfway through the book, you learn that the plantain, a large part of their nutrition, was introduced by the Spanish 500 years ago. There is evidence of more contemporary contact such as axes, machetes, rifles and other items given to this "pristine" community before Chagnon's arrival.
- Rky Ward, an anthropology student, is mentioned in passing as being on the visit to Iwahikoroba-teri - a tribe of the Yanomamo that have not been visited by any outsiders. Other than giving Ward's name, this section is written as though Chagnon is a lone adventurer on this long and significant trip.
- What came first, the measles or the measles vaccination program?
- Similarly, and perhaps significantly, in the beginning I wondered about the genealogy research he was doing. As a lay person, I wondered how this fit anthropological methods as I understood them. About 200 pages later it says that the research is funded by the Atomic Energy Commission for reasons (something to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that are not clear.
- The research itself is incomplete. Chagnon is studying genealogies, where and when people were born and how they die. Not one Yanomamo died in childbirth (over several generations) according to his statistics.
- There are no interviews with any woman and no comments on how children are raised. I know more about how Chagnon cooked his food that the Yanomamo.
Chagnon has created some important statistics. Perhaps the limited nature of the work has brought about the criticism. He is stingy with giving credit to others which is a good way to lose the support of those who might be in a position to defend him.
If this book were only about the Yamomamo, despite the issues above I'd give it four stars. It is interesting to hear how an anthropologist lives, builds huts and boats (or has them built for him), learns the language, travels about and how the Yanomamo make war and mourn, and (sadly) how the men treat women. There are lots of photos. As Chignon tells of the criticisms he's received,I couldn't help but think back to the missing links in the first part and consider the other possible ways to look at the issues.
June 19, 2021
Excellent book.
We learn that Chagnon's enemies accuse him of some ghoulish experiment by vaccinating the Yanomamo for measles. I decided to do some research about this. The vaccine he used was the Edmonston B. Turns out that the CDC withdrew that vaccine from the market in 1975 due to a relatively high frequency of fever and rash in recipients. I think Chagnon meant well, but may have inadvertently set in motion an epidemic by using this particular vaccine. (To be clear, I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I just got my Covid shot)
See the fifth paragraph in this CDC report….
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwr...
Note: the record on Edmonston B used to be more detailed, but seems to have been excised from public access.
We learn that Chagnon's enemies accuse him of some ghoulish experiment by vaccinating the Yanomamo for measles. I decided to do some research about this. The vaccine he used was the Edmonston B. Turns out that the CDC withdrew that vaccine from the market in 1975 due to a relatively high frequency of fever and rash in recipients. I think Chagnon meant well, but may have inadvertently set in motion an epidemic by using this particular vaccine. (To be clear, I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I just got my Covid shot)
See the fifth paragraph in this CDC report….
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwr...
Note: the record on Edmonston B used to be more detailed, but seems to have been excised from public access.
December 6, 2015
“The probability is close to zero that any contemporary anthropologist will have the opportunity to be the first representative of his or her culture to contact tribal peoples who have never seen outsiders before or who have had fleeting encounters with outsiders. In the Amazon Basin, for example, remaining uncontacted tribes consist of a few families who are hiding out in the remaining hidden pockets of unexplored difficult-to-reach areas. The Yanomamö were the last large, multivillage tribe left in the mid-1960s when I went there. At that time they were about 25,000 people living in 250 or more separate villages.
"Fewer anthropologists study tribesmen anymore. The very mention of the word tribe in anthropology has, in the past fifteen or twenty years, become an embarrassment to politically correct cultural anthropologists.”
I've read this author before, or rather more precisely I've skimmed one of his books (most likely Yanomamö: The Fierce People) before, in a long-ago undergrad class at Purdue. It was one of those rapid-fire summer courses, some 200-level survey course taught by a neophyte, long-haired, twenty-something, wannabe-hippie grad student to fulfill a requirement for my arts degree, and that book was accompanied by a typical inch-and-a-half thick textbook that we had to devour in four weeks' time. I'm glad I discovered this on Oyster, and gave it the proper reading it deserves. This is a fundamentally important text, centered on a fundamentally important "academic schism," and I now understand why the grad student tried hard to cram it into our young minds without standing on soapbox. The seeds were planted, and my own observations, experiences, and research regarding humanity embrace Chagnon's work well.
For those still stuck in romantic delusions of ancient peoples and the inherent benevolence of mankind, Chagnon destroyed the myth of the "noble savage" and tore a rift through the field of cultural anthropology (later to be encapsulated as sociobiology), beginning in the 1960s (when most all native peoples were already conquered, subjugated, enslaved, or destroyed), by leading through example by long immersion amongst the people he was studying, and imprinting his findings on the history of mankind. As he discovered, we--Homo sapiens--are predominantly violent, selfish, and lustful creatures. Placing this distinction at the forefront of understanding the human condition, to me, is better than hopeful wishes hemmed in by crafted religions, imposed morality, and "the rule of law." In fact one can easily view such "civilizing forces" as directly combating the inherent nature of our being. Like domesticated dogs tossed back into the wild, humans too will either revert to a feral state or be consumed by better predators. Yes, we are capable of extreme kindness, cooperation, mirth, and humorous mischief (which Chagnon illustrates as well), but these traits don't destroy lives and livelihoods like the others do. Most importantly as Chagnon shows, these aforementioned traits are actually beneficial to humans on individual and kin-group levels. Guided by the two pillars of Darwin and Levi-Strauss, Chagnon fundamentally encapsulates the human condition within this work and illustrates our species as the complex "animal" it is.
“There were two things I learned that first day that would dominate much of my field research life for the next thirty-five years.
"The first discovery was that 'native warfare' was not simply some neutral item on an anthropological trait list, equivalent to other traits like 'they make baskets with vines' or 'the kinship system is the bifurcate-merging type.' Among the Yanomamö native warfare was not just occasional or sporadic but was a chronic threat, lurking and threatening to disrupt communities at any moment. The larger the community of people, the more one could sense its foreboding presence.
"Warfare and the threat of warfare permeated almost all aspects of Yanomamö social life: politics, visits between villages, tensions among people, feasts, trading, daily routines, village size, and even where new villages were established when larger communities subdivided, a process I called village fissioning. This martial condition is not often discussed in the anthropological literature because there were few places in the world where populations of tribesmen were still growing by reproducing offspring faster than people were dying and were fighting with each other in complete independence of nation states that surrounded them. Yanomamö history is a history of wars, as Karl Marx claimed of the history of all peoples.
The second discovery I made that first day was that most Yanomamö arguments and fights started over women. This straightforward ethnographic observation would cause me a great deal of academic grief because in the 1960s 'fighting over women' was considered a controversial explanation in 'scientific' anthropology. The most scientific anthropological theory of primitive war of the 1960s held that tribesmen, just like members of industrialized nations, fought only over scarce material resources—food, oil, land, water supplies, seaports, wealth, etc. For an anthropologist to suggest that fighting had something to do with women, that is, with sex and reproductive competition, was tantamount to blasphemy, or at best ludicrous. Biologists, on the other hand, found this observation not only unsurprising, but normal for a sexually reproducing species. What they did find surprising was that anthropologists regarded fighting over reproductive competition as ludicrous when applied to humans. Competition among males vying for females was, after all, widespread in the animal world.”
“This is why there is so much club fighting and why villages split into two or more groups so easily. Conflicts over the possession of nubile females have probably been the main reason for fights and killings throughout most of human history: the original human societal rules emerged, in all probability, to regulate male access to females and prevent the social chaos attendant on fighting over women. Males in this persistent kind of social environment sought the help of other related males—brothers, sons, cousins, uncles, nephews—and formed male coalitions to pursue their selfish reproductive goals as well as to minimize lethal conflicts within their own groups. Male access to females—usually 'heroes' attempting to secure the love, affection, and proprietary reproductive potential of heroines—is the constant theme of myths, legends, and historical accounts of just about all cultures and societies known to historians and anthropologists.”
“I suggest that conflicts over the means of reproduction—women—dominated the political machinations of men during a vast span of human history and shaped human male psychology. It was only after polygyny became 'expensive' that these conflicts shifted to material resources—the 'gold and diamonds' my incredulous colleagues alluded to—and the material means of production. By that time, after the agricultural revolution, the accumulation of wealth—and its consequence, power—had become a prerequisite to having multiple mates.”
The quotes above are just slivers to the whole, but you get an impression of the theories Chagnon's decades of work have produced with empirical evidence. He spends the last sections of this book highlighting the academic-political-religious firestorm his work (and the work of others) has ignited, and convincingly details the lies and slander heaped upon his research and theoretical positions, with aplomb. For anyone seeking to better understand humanity and human behavior, especially writers of fiction, this book would be an indispensable resource.
"Fewer anthropologists study tribesmen anymore. The very mention of the word tribe in anthropology has, in the past fifteen or twenty years, become an embarrassment to politically correct cultural anthropologists.”
I've read this author before, or rather more precisely I've skimmed one of his books (most likely Yanomamö: The Fierce People) before, in a long-ago undergrad class at Purdue. It was one of those rapid-fire summer courses, some 200-level survey course taught by a neophyte, long-haired, twenty-something, wannabe-hippie grad student to fulfill a requirement for my arts degree, and that book was accompanied by a typical inch-and-a-half thick textbook that we had to devour in four weeks' time. I'm glad I discovered this on Oyster, and gave it the proper reading it deserves. This is a fundamentally important text, centered on a fundamentally important "academic schism," and I now understand why the grad student tried hard to cram it into our young minds without standing on soapbox. The seeds were planted, and my own observations, experiences, and research regarding humanity embrace Chagnon's work well.
For those still stuck in romantic delusions of ancient peoples and the inherent benevolence of mankind, Chagnon destroyed the myth of the "noble savage" and tore a rift through the field of cultural anthropology (later to be encapsulated as sociobiology), beginning in the 1960s (when most all native peoples were already conquered, subjugated, enslaved, or destroyed), by leading through example by long immersion amongst the people he was studying, and imprinting his findings on the history of mankind. As he discovered, we--Homo sapiens--are predominantly violent, selfish, and lustful creatures. Placing this distinction at the forefront of understanding the human condition, to me, is better than hopeful wishes hemmed in by crafted religions, imposed morality, and "the rule of law." In fact one can easily view such "civilizing forces" as directly combating the inherent nature of our being. Like domesticated dogs tossed back into the wild, humans too will either revert to a feral state or be consumed by better predators. Yes, we are capable of extreme kindness, cooperation, mirth, and humorous mischief (which Chagnon illustrates as well), but these traits don't destroy lives and livelihoods like the others do. Most importantly as Chagnon shows, these aforementioned traits are actually beneficial to humans on individual and kin-group levels. Guided by the two pillars of Darwin and Levi-Strauss, Chagnon fundamentally encapsulates the human condition within this work and illustrates our species as the complex "animal" it is.
“There were two things I learned that first day that would dominate much of my field research life for the next thirty-five years.
"The first discovery was that 'native warfare' was not simply some neutral item on an anthropological trait list, equivalent to other traits like 'they make baskets with vines' or 'the kinship system is the bifurcate-merging type.' Among the Yanomamö native warfare was not just occasional or sporadic but was a chronic threat, lurking and threatening to disrupt communities at any moment. The larger the community of people, the more one could sense its foreboding presence.
"Warfare and the threat of warfare permeated almost all aspects of Yanomamö social life: politics, visits between villages, tensions among people, feasts, trading, daily routines, village size, and even where new villages were established when larger communities subdivided, a process I called village fissioning. This martial condition is not often discussed in the anthropological literature because there were few places in the world where populations of tribesmen were still growing by reproducing offspring faster than people were dying and were fighting with each other in complete independence of nation states that surrounded them. Yanomamö history is a history of wars, as Karl Marx claimed of the history of all peoples.
The second discovery I made that first day was that most Yanomamö arguments and fights started over women. This straightforward ethnographic observation would cause me a great deal of academic grief because in the 1960s 'fighting over women' was considered a controversial explanation in 'scientific' anthropology. The most scientific anthropological theory of primitive war of the 1960s held that tribesmen, just like members of industrialized nations, fought only over scarce material resources—food, oil, land, water supplies, seaports, wealth, etc. For an anthropologist to suggest that fighting had something to do with women, that is, with sex and reproductive competition, was tantamount to blasphemy, or at best ludicrous. Biologists, on the other hand, found this observation not only unsurprising, but normal for a sexually reproducing species. What they did find surprising was that anthropologists regarded fighting over reproductive competition as ludicrous when applied to humans. Competition among males vying for females was, after all, widespread in the animal world.”
“This is why there is so much club fighting and why villages split into two or more groups so easily. Conflicts over the possession of nubile females have probably been the main reason for fights and killings throughout most of human history: the original human societal rules emerged, in all probability, to regulate male access to females and prevent the social chaos attendant on fighting over women. Males in this persistent kind of social environment sought the help of other related males—brothers, sons, cousins, uncles, nephews—and formed male coalitions to pursue their selfish reproductive goals as well as to minimize lethal conflicts within their own groups. Male access to females—usually 'heroes' attempting to secure the love, affection, and proprietary reproductive potential of heroines—is the constant theme of myths, legends, and historical accounts of just about all cultures and societies known to historians and anthropologists.”
“I suggest that conflicts over the means of reproduction—women—dominated the political machinations of men during a vast span of human history and shaped human male psychology. It was only after polygyny became 'expensive' that these conflicts shifted to material resources—the 'gold and diamonds' my incredulous colleagues alluded to—and the material means of production. By that time, after the agricultural revolution, the accumulation of wealth—and its consequence, power—had become a prerequisite to having multiple mates.”
The quotes above are just slivers to the whole, but you get an impression of the theories Chagnon's decades of work have produced with empirical evidence. He spends the last sections of this book highlighting the academic-political-religious firestorm his work (and the work of others) has ignited, and convincingly details the lies and slander heaped upon his research and theoretical positions, with aplomb. For anyone seeking to better understand humanity and human behavior, especially writers of fiction, this book would be an indispensable resource.
Read
January 29, 2022When Napoleon Chagnon's field observations contradicted the Edenic mythology of the "secular" contemporary Academy, he got himself smeared as a homicidal Nazi eugenicist for his trouble. It's inspiring to see how he stood up to the shrieking mob of arm-chair anthropologists who singled him out for abuse. Chagnon, it must be admitted, can come across as an irascible character, but that trait seems to have served him well in his dealings with both "dangerous tribes" of the subtitle: the warlike Yanomamo of the Amazon, and the censorious ideologues masquerading as scholars who've colonized the anthropology departments of the modern university system. Bravo, professor Chagnon, for standing your ground.
May 10, 2018
Up to page 378 this is a riveting book worthy of 4 stars, but beginning on that page, Chagnon decides to document every detail about the massive "scandal" that erupted involving his Yanomamo anthropological work and continues in this vein for the rest of the book. This is a "scandal" that involved other anthropologists and scientific organizations that questioned his data and his methodology while doing his fieldwork studying the Yanomamo people. The purpose of the book then became to try and exonerate himself rather than the interesting story of lives of the Yanomamo and to convince readers he was falsely maligned. This reader just ended up not knowing what was true or false in this "scandal", but also feeling manipulated by the author.
April 16, 2013
This book is mostly about Chagnon's research and experience with the Yanomamo in South America. While I found it hard to connect with Yanomamo life, I had to admire Chagnon for his work gathering data in very difficult surroundings.
Because the final chapters chronicle his squabbles with postmodern academics, some reviewers have panned the book. It is hard for me to take postmodern attitudes seriously (see Postmodern Pooh) so it was easy for me to "side with" Chagnon.
Because the final chapters chronicle his squabbles with postmodern academics, some reviewers have panned the book. It is hard for me to take postmodern attitudes seriously (see Postmodern Pooh) so it was easy for me to "side with" Chagnon.
July 12, 2013
This had the potential to be a great book and missed the mark by a mile. It needed an editor to tighten up the narrative which was repetitive and disorganized. Chagon is clearly very impressed with his own work and spends much of the book expressing how his ideas are better than everyone else's. I skipped the last two chapters which appeared to be tales of academic infighting. The Yanomamo lost out on this one.
April 29, 2014
I received this book from Goodreads First Reads. It was a lovely, yet long read. A very interesting and detailed description of life as we have never known it, and never will again. What I found intriguing was the inside look into the academic field of anthropology in the mid 20th century. I never imagined there to be so much corruption among academics. This book was a learning experience in many ways.
June 24, 2024
An extremely unique account of an anthropologist caught between 2 peoples- the primitive/ pristine Indigenous of Latin America (Yanomamos) and the rigid conventional academicians of anthropology.
I was taken aback by the social behaviour of Yanomamo people but such instances are something documented in other works by Risley and van der Bergh as well.
Let's keep an open mind and explore our shared past more
I was taken aback by the social behaviour of Yanomamo people but such instances are something documented in other works by Risley and van der Bergh as well.
Let's keep an open mind and explore our shared past more
March 2, 2014
I abandoned this book about a third of the way through. I found the author self absorbed and quite annoying to be honest. He seems more interested in pushing his narrow purview on modern anthropology than in telling the tale. It should have, could have been a very interesting book. Pity.
March 8, 2013
This book was excellent. I would recommend it to anyone. This review for it from The New York Times is a pretty good review of it:
Review of Noble Savages
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: February 18, 2013
An Anthropologist’s War Stories
"Noble Savages"
By NICHOLAS WADE
NOBLE SAVAGES
My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—The Yanomamö and the Anthropologists
By Napoleon A. Chagnon
Illustrated. 531 pp. Simon & Schuster. $32.50.
What were our early ancestors really like as they accomplished the
transition from hunter-gathering bands to more complex settled
societies? The anthropologist Napoleon A. Chagnon may have come
closest to the answer in his 35-year study of a remarkable population,
the Yanomamö of Venezuela and Brazil.
His new book, “Noble Savages,” has three themes. First, it is a
beautifully written adventure story of how Dr. Chagnon learned to
survive in an entirely alien culture and environment, among villages
locked in perpetual warfare and jaguars that would stalk his tracks
through the jungle. Second, it describes the author’s gradual piecing
together of how Yanomamö society actually works, a matter of great
relevance to recent human evolution. Third, it recounts his travails
at the hands of the American Anthropological Association.
Most tribes studied by anthropologists have lost much of their culture
and structure under Western influences. In the 1960s, when Dr. Chagnon
first visited them, the Yanomamö were probably as close as could be to
people living in a state of nature. Their warfare had not been
suppressed by colonial powers. They had been isolated for so long,
even from other tribes in the Amazon, that their language bears little
or no relationship to any other. Consisting of some 25,000 people,
living in 250 villages, the Yanomamö cultivated plantains, hunted wild
animals and raided one another incessantly.
Trained as an engineer before taking up anthropology, Dr. Chagnon was
interested in the mechanics of how the Yanomamö worked. He perceived
that kinship was the glue that held societies together, so he started
to construct an elaborate genealogy of the Yanomamö (often spelled
Yanomani.)
The genealogy took many years, in part because of the Yanomamö taboo
on mentioning the names of the dead. When completed, it held the key
to unlocking many important features of Yanomamö society. One of Dr.
Chagnon’s discoveries was that warriors who had killed a man in battle
sired three times more children than men who had not killed.
His report, published in Science in 1988, set off a storm among
anthropologists who believed that peace, not war, was the natural
state of human existence. Dr. Chagnon’s descriptions of Yanomamö
warfare had been bad enough; now he seemed to be saying that
aggression was rewarded and could be inherited.
A repeated theme in his book is the clash between his empirical
findings and the ideology of his fellow anthropologists. The general
bias in anthropological theory draws heavily from Marxism, Dr. Chagnon
writes. His colleagues insisted that the Yanomamö were fighting over
material possessions, whereas Dr. Chagnon believed the fights were
about something much more basic — access to nubile young women.
In his view, evolution and sociobiology, not Marxist theory, held the
best promise of understanding human societies. In this light, he
writes, it made perfect sense that the struggle among the Yanomamö,
and probably among all human societies at such a stage in their
history, was for reproductive advantage.
Men form coalitions to gain access to women. Because some men will be
able to have many wives, others must share a wife or go without,
creating a great scarcity of women. This is why Yanomamö villages
constantly raid one another.
The raiding over women creates a more complex problem, that of
maintaining the social cohesion required to support warfare. A major
cause of a village’s splitting up is fights over women. But a smaller
village is less able to defend itself against larger neighbors. The
most efficient strategy to keep a village both large and cohesive
through kinship bonds is for two male lineage groups to exchange
cousins in marriage. Dr. Chagnon found that this is indeed the general
system practiced by the Yanomamö.
After overtaxing one of his informants, the shaman Dedeheiwä, about
the reason for a succession of village fissions into smaller hostile
groups, Dr. Chagnon found himself rebuked with the outburst, “Don’t
ask such stupid questions! Women! Women! Women! Women! Women!”
During his years of working among the Yanomamö, Dr. Chagnon fell into
cross purposes with the Salesians, the Catholic missionary group that
was the major Western influence in the Yanomamö region. Instead of
traveling by canoe and foot to the remote Yanomamö villages, the
Salesians preferred to induce the Yanomami to settle near their
mission sites, even though it exposed them to Western diseases to
which they had little or no immunity, Dr. Chagnon writes. He also
objected to the Salesians’ offering the Yanomamö guns, which tribe
members used to kill one another as well as for hunting.
The Salesians and Dr. Chagnon’s academic enemies saw the chance to
join forces against him when the writer Patrick Tierney published a
book, “Darkness in El Dorado” (2000), accusing Dr. Chagnon and the
well-known medical geneticist James V. Neel of having deliberately
caused a measles epidemic among the Yanomamö in 1968.
On the basis of these accusations, two of Dr. Chagnon’s academic
critics denounced him to the American Anthropological Association,
comparing him with the Nazi physician Josef Mengele. The association
appointed a committee that, though it cleared Dr. Chagnon of the
measles charge, was nevertheless hostile, accusing him of going
against the Yanomamös’ interests.
In 2005, the association’s members voted by a 2-to-1 margin to rescind
acceptance of the committee’s report. But the damage was done. Dr.
Chagnon’s opponents in Brazil were able to block further research
trips. His final years of research on the Yanomamö were disrupted.
In 2010 the A.A.A. voted to strip the word “science” from its
long-range mission plan and focus instead on “public understanding.”
Its distaste for science and its attack on Dr. Chagnon are now an
indelible part of its record.
Dr. Chagnon’s legacy, on the other hand, is that he was able to gain a
deep insight into the last remaining tribe living in a state of
nature. “Noble Savages” is a remarkable testament to an engineer’s
35-year effort to unravel the complex working of an untouched human
society.
Review of Noble Savages
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: February 18, 2013
An Anthropologist’s War Stories
"Noble Savages"
By NICHOLAS WADE
NOBLE SAVAGES
My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—The Yanomamö and the Anthropologists
By Napoleon A. Chagnon
Illustrated. 531 pp. Simon & Schuster. $32.50.
What were our early ancestors really like as they accomplished the
transition from hunter-gathering bands to more complex settled
societies? The anthropologist Napoleon A. Chagnon may have come
closest to the answer in his 35-year study of a remarkable population,
the Yanomamö of Venezuela and Brazil.
His new book, “Noble Savages,” has three themes. First, it is a
beautifully written adventure story of how Dr. Chagnon learned to
survive in an entirely alien culture and environment, among villages
locked in perpetual warfare and jaguars that would stalk his tracks
through the jungle. Second, it describes the author’s gradual piecing
together of how Yanomamö society actually works, a matter of great
relevance to recent human evolution. Third, it recounts his travails
at the hands of the American Anthropological Association.
Most tribes studied by anthropologists have lost much of their culture
and structure under Western influences. In the 1960s, when Dr. Chagnon
first visited them, the Yanomamö were probably as close as could be to
people living in a state of nature. Their warfare had not been
suppressed by colonial powers. They had been isolated for so long,
even from other tribes in the Amazon, that their language bears little
or no relationship to any other. Consisting of some 25,000 people,
living in 250 villages, the Yanomamö cultivated plantains, hunted wild
animals and raided one another incessantly.
Trained as an engineer before taking up anthropology, Dr. Chagnon was
interested in the mechanics of how the Yanomamö worked. He perceived
that kinship was the glue that held societies together, so he started
to construct an elaborate genealogy of the Yanomamö (often spelled
Yanomani.)
The genealogy took many years, in part because of the Yanomamö taboo
on mentioning the names of the dead. When completed, it held the key
to unlocking many important features of Yanomamö society. One of Dr.
Chagnon’s discoveries was that warriors who had killed a man in battle
sired three times more children than men who had not killed.
His report, published in Science in 1988, set off a storm among
anthropologists who believed that peace, not war, was the natural
state of human existence. Dr. Chagnon’s descriptions of Yanomamö
warfare had been bad enough; now he seemed to be saying that
aggression was rewarded and could be inherited.
A repeated theme in his book is the clash between his empirical
findings and the ideology of his fellow anthropologists. The general
bias in anthropological theory draws heavily from Marxism, Dr. Chagnon
writes. His colleagues insisted that the Yanomamö were fighting over
material possessions, whereas Dr. Chagnon believed the fights were
about something much more basic — access to nubile young women.
In his view, evolution and sociobiology, not Marxist theory, held the
best promise of understanding human societies. In this light, he
writes, it made perfect sense that the struggle among the Yanomamö,
and probably among all human societies at such a stage in their
history, was for reproductive advantage.
Men form coalitions to gain access to women. Because some men will be
able to have many wives, others must share a wife or go without,
creating a great scarcity of women. This is why Yanomamö villages
constantly raid one another.
The raiding over women creates a more complex problem, that of
maintaining the social cohesion required to support warfare. A major
cause of a village’s splitting up is fights over women. But a smaller
village is less able to defend itself against larger neighbors. The
most efficient strategy to keep a village both large and cohesive
through kinship bonds is for two male lineage groups to exchange
cousins in marriage. Dr. Chagnon found that this is indeed the general
system practiced by the Yanomamö.
After overtaxing one of his informants, the shaman Dedeheiwä, about
the reason for a succession of village fissions into smaller hostile
groups, Dr. Chagnon found himself rebuked with the outburst, “Don’t
ask such stupid questions! Women! Women! Women! Women! Women!”
During his years of working among the Yanomamö, Dr. Chagnon fell into
cross purposes with the Salesians, the Catholic missionary group that
was the major Western influence in the Yanomamö region. Instead of
traveling by canoe and foot to the remote Yanomamö villages, the
Salesians preferred to induce the Yanomami to settle near their
mission sites, even though it exposed them to Western diseases to
which they had little or no immunity, Dr. Chagnon writes. He also
objected to the Salesians’ offering the Yanomamö guns, which tribe
members used to kill one another as well as for hunting.
The Salesians and Dr. Chagnon’s academic enemies saw the chance to
join forces against him when the writer Patrick Tierney published a
book, “Darkness in El Dorado” (2000), accusing Dr. Chagnon and the
well-known medical geneticist James V. Neel of having deliberately
caused a measles epidemic among the Yanomamö in 1968.
On the basis of these accusations, two of Dr. Chagnon’s academic
critics denounced him to the American Anthropological Association,
comparing him with the Nazi physician Josef Mengele. The association
appointed a committee that, though it cleared Dr. Chagnon of the
measles charge, was nevertheless hostile, accusing him of going
against the Yanomamös’ interests.
In 2005, the association’s members voted by a 2-to-1 margin to rescind
acceptance of the committee’s report. But the damage was done. Dr.
Chagnon’s opponents in Brazil were able to block further research
trips. His final years of research on the Yanomamö were disrupted.
In 2010 the A.A.A. voted to strip the word “science” from its
long-range mission plan and focus instead on “public understanding.”
Its distaste for science and its attack on Dr. Chagnon are now an
indelible part of its record.
Dr. Chagnon’s legacy, on the other hand, is that he was able to gain a
deep insight into the last remaining tribe living in a state of
nature. “Noble Savages” is a remarkable testament to an engineer’s
35-year effort to unravel the complex working of an untouched human
society.
July 7, 2014
Essentially two books in one, the first part being an autoethnograpical account of the authors time spent working with various Yanomamo tribes in the Amazon region of Venezuela (mixed in with some ethnographic data every once in a while) and the last part (the last few chapters of this large book) discussing the feuds between Chagon and those members of the anthropology community who did not validate his sociobiological research methods and conclusions (mainly that the main reason for warfare among the Yanomamo was because of women (not resources) - who were ultimately needed for reproduction and to continue the bloodlines of Yanomamo men).
Part 1 was not always chronological, very repetitive and frequently discussed someone or something and stated that it would be explained later in the book (often not even describing what chapter or page). Part 1 was also much more about Chagnon's experiences and less about an ethnographic account of the Yanomamo people. In my opinion, the author comes off as pompous at times and presumptuous. He insinuates he is the main foreign contact for the Yanomamo, but he briefly mentions many other foreigners (missionaries, academics, health professionals) who also interact regularly with the Yanomamo. I would have liked to have heard more from these people about their observations of the Yanomamo to back up Chagnon's assumptions and observations. WHY he was conducting the various studies on lineages and how his research was used was only briefly alluded to in the book.
Part 2 in my opinion is Chagnon's rant against the people he believes declared "war" on him or instigated "smear campaigns"(anthropologists, activists, the Salisean nuns and other missionaries. This last part is obviously very one sided. Starting with the divide Chagnon describes of anthropologists who see themselves as scientists and anthropologists who see themselves more closely aligned with the humanities. Chagon describes himself as a sociobiologist (chapter 14's first section is "How I Became a Sociobiologist") and states that his research and views alienated him from the anthropology community because sociobiology was viewed by some as an effort to apply Darwinian principles to human behavior (e.g. biological determinants). On page 387 Chagnon details how radicals in the audience at a presentation on sociobiology stormed the stage, yelling and pouring ice water on a E.O Wilson who was presenting (and who was is a full leg cast)on sociobiology. Based on Chagnon's own descriptions in this book, I think he is an antagonistic person, he details a lot of feud's and disputes he has with others (e.g. p.409 discusses his "long-time and widely known dispute with Marvin Harris)-needless to say there is evidently a very large other side of the story! This other side of the story was attempted in 2000 when Patrick Tierney's "Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon" was published and encouraged an investigation into Chagnon (and others)by the American Anthropology Association which uncovered some of the allegations in the book were false.
Academics are like politics and religion- lots of factions, lots of views, lots of radicals. Though I was not fond of the writing style in the first part and disliked the one-sided rants of the second part I think this book encouraged me to reflect on how I conduct research and how I want that research to be viewed by my anthropology peers.
Part 1 was not always chronological, very repetitive and frequently discussed someone or something and stated that it would be explained later in the book (often not even describing what chapter or page). Part 1 was also much more about Chagnon's experiences and less about an ethnographic account of the Yanomamo people. In my opinion, the author comes off as pompous at times and presumptuous. He insinuates he is the main foreign contact for the Yanomamo, but he briefly mentions many other foreigners (missionaries, academics, health professionals) who also interact regularly with the Yanomamo. I would have liked to have heard more from these people about their observations of the Yanomamo to back up Chagnon's assumptions and observations. WHY he was conducting the various studies on lineages and how his research was used was only briefly alluded to in the book.
Part 2 in my opinion is Chagnon's rant against the people he believes declared "war" on him or instigated "smear campaigns"(anthropologists, activists, the Salisean nuns and other missionaries. This last part is obviously very one sided. Starting with the divide Chagnon describes of anthropologists who see themselves as scientists and anthropologists who see themselves more closely aligned with the humanities. Chagon describes himself as a sociobiologist (chapter 14's first section is "How I Became a Sociobiologist") and states that his research and views alienated him from the anthropology community because sociobiology was viewed by some as an effort to apply Darwinian principles to human behavior (e.g. biological determinants). On page 387 Chagnon details how radicals in the audience at a presentation on sociobiology stormed the stage, yelling and pouring ice water on a E.O Wilson who was presenting (and who was is a full leg cast)on sociobiology. Based on Chagnon's own descriptions in this book, I think he is an antagonistic person, he details a lot of feud's and disputes he has with others (e.g. p.409 discusses his "long-time and widely known dispute with Marvin Harris)-needless to say there is evidently a very large other side of the story! This other side of the story was attempted in 2000 when Patrick Tierney's "Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon" was published and encouraged an investigation into Chagnon (and others)by the American Anthropology Association which uncovered some of the allegations in the book were false.
Academics are like politics and religion- lots of factions, lots of views, lots of radicals. Though I was not fond of the writing style in the first part and disliked the one-sided rants of the second part I think this book encouraged me to reflect on how I conduct research and how I want that research to be viewed by my anthropology peers.
March 27, 2023
Having studied Napoleon Chagnon's work amongst the Yanomamö in an honours course at the University of Sydney's Anthropology Faculty in the 1970s, I was keen to read his account of the destructive controversy, fuelled by the Catholic (Salesian) Missionaries in the field of his study in the Venezuelan Amazon, and the other "dangerous tribe: anthropologists" whose theoretical orientation took on the toxic extremity of attempting to drive the world renowned Chagnon out of the profession and of academia. This is a gripping account whether you are a reader of anthropology or not, of how the obsession for control and domination of a physical place as in the missionaries, or an intellectual field as with the opposing anthropologists, can destroy the quality of life and professional reputation of an eminent scientist, all based on lies. The American Anthropological Association was forced to rescind its acceptance of a mendacious report following investigation by Chagnon's detractors when evidence from a wide variety of scientists proved the accusations against him and his colleagues were false. The appalling cost of this erroneous assault was to darken the last two decades of his life and serve as a dire warning of the lust for power of the missionaries, which I have witnessed myself in West Africa, and the abandonment of intellectual perspective and ethical boundaries of academics in their pursuit of proof of their own vindication. Both the missionaries and the anthropologists were infected with the same delusion: that there is only one truth.
June 5, 2013
I read this book following my reading of Anne Patchett's "State of Wonder" which is set in the Amazon rainforest.
This is a big book and is in two part. Part 1 is about the Yamamomo tribe and their way of life as observed by Chagnon over 30 years of study which included long periods living with them.
Part 2 is a chronicle of the difficulty he faced with fellow anthropologists. What I found amazing is that many anthropologists do not consider that their field is a science but rather consider their role to support native peoples who have been ill treated by development. Chagnons view is that primitive tribes still living in their original environment and enjoying their ancient way of life should be studied because they can help us to learn and understand our own true nature.
"One of history’s greatest anthropologists—and a rip-roaring story-teller—recounts his life with an endangered Amazonian tribe and the mind-boggling controversies his work ignited. Noble Savages is rich with insights into human nature, and an entertaining interlude with a remarkable man.” (Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University.)
I found it absolutely fascinating.
This is a big book and is in two part. Part 1 is about the Yamamomo tribe and their way of life as observed by Chagnon over 30 years of study which included long periods living with them.
Part 2 is a chronicle of the difficulty he faced with fellow anthropologists. What I found amazing is that many anthropologists do not consider that their field is a science but rather consider their role to support native peoples who have been ill treated by development. Chagnons view is that primitive tribes still living in their original environment and enjoying their ancient way of life should be studied because they can help us to learn and understand our own true nature.
"One of history’s greatest anthropologists—and a rip-roaring story-teller—recounts his life with an endangered Amazonian tribe and the mind-boggling controversies his work ignited. Noble Savages is rich with insights into human nature, and an entertaining interlude with a remarkable man.” (Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University.)
I found it absolutely fascinating.
August 25, 2017
Fascinating book! I'm so glad I read this because it destroys some of the stereotypes I've had of "noble savages" and of "scholarship." Chagnon is a wonderful writer. His descriptions of his adventures among the jungle people are understated and unhyped, which is refreshing. The second half of the book is about what happened to Chagnon in the scholarly world, which turns out to be just as savage, maybe moreso, than the jungle. The author seems to have been better equipped psychologically to handle jaguars and dangerous headmen than his first world attackers.
April 28, 2013
This guy seemed kind of like a jerk. His insights about the Yamomano were fascinating, but his eagerness to make sweeping generalizations about the motivations of humans in some primitive, evolutionary past put me off. While the Yamomano surely do provide some insight, there are many other societies on Earth that seem equally cut off from civilization and yet don't seem to have the same societal structure.
Also, the griping about his fights with other anthropologists was boring.
Also, the griping about his fights with other anthropologists was boring.
July 18, 2015
I couldn't put this book down - the insights into the behaviour of the more lethal of the two tribes (the anthropologists) were fascinating and a salutary warning not to allow the number of letters after someones name dazzle you. Jared Diamond has also fallen victim to the same deeply intolerant elements in academia for daring to question the tenets of their secular "religion". A great read.....
April 6, 2015
This should be a thrilling account of an anthropologists encounter with a preneolithic people but unfortunately is written quite dryly. This could be a five star book if just the writing had a bit more life.
That being said it is still a good introduction to the Yanomami and the seriously vitriolic controversy caused by this author's time with them.
That being said it is still a good introduction to the Yanomami and the seriously vitriolic controversy caused by this author's time with them.
May 17, 2024
DNF. This isn't so much about the tribe or even about the author's experiences in the field as it was comments about academia. Maybe it changes farther into the book, but after a few chapters, there's still quite a lot of commentary on who said what and how that academic turned out to be wrong, etc. Reads like academic history with a touch of high school cheerleader.
eARC from NetGalley.
eARC from NetGalley.
March 21, 2017
The controversy over Chagnon and, perhaps at a lower pitch, his work, is (everyone who comments on it likes to say) "done to death." Here's an abnormally judicious account that does the important work of separating out all the discrete strands of the matter:
http://embodiedknowledges.blogspot.co...
My positive rating by no means puts me in the "Chagnon camp," let alone the "sociobiology camp," but it does indicate that I think some of the fair methodological criticisms aimed at Chagnon are not fatal. I also object to the idea that a Marxist orientation requires us to deny the possibility of violence over women as a stable trait of male humans, one that will even survive "after the revolution," as it were, when resource wars and conflicts are relatively solved. Isn't this the whole point of reasonable incarnations of "intersectionality" and all that? Class war, while the history of all heretofore existing civilizations, is not necessarily a sufficient explanation for all human behavior. Ferguson is right in his emphases; but they don't in any obvious way fully supplant Chagnon's descriptions. By positing that all knowable Yanamamo violence is due to competition over Western-introduced scarcity, the myth of a time of peaceful non-scarcity is preserved. Chagnon is right, to a degree many are unwilling to grant him, that political correctness guides some anthropological research.
To a degree none of the participants are willing to admit, a great bulk of the acrimony of the debate is over personalities. And while usually this focuses on Chagnon's alleged bullish manner, we should focus on some of his critics like Sahlins. When the Darkness book came out, it accused Chagnon of being a willing partner to genocide. In some of his writings of the time, Sahlins more or less brushes aside the seriousness and horror of this entirely cooked-up story. One almost gets the sense that, in Sahlins view, being accused of genocide serves Chagnon right for adopting a theoretical orientation contrary to his (how dare the student not follow the teacher).
Chagnon is not the most judicious commentator on the controversy, but it is madness to expect him to be. The accusations, wholly unfounded, are of an extremely painful nature. With the way commentators on all sides conflate the ten issues outlined in the linked blog post, making it difficult to separate the genocide accusation from the more legitimate methodological and theoretical disagreements, it is to be expected the accused might have difficulty parrying all the blows in a totally dispassionate manner. We're talking about a profession whose members responded with shock-horror at the way Chagnon allegedly violated a naming taboo, but barely flinched when a member of that profession was accused, on fraudulent evidence, of committing the worst crime known to their own culture. The reaction of some anthropologists to this episode does have the virtue of proving the point that civilization is wicked and violent in its own, highly mediated (and often, unmediated) ways. (Indeed, I'd hold [contra the reactionary feel good pop sci of Pinker] that current civilization is more violent than ever, but that's a different matter).
The way the sociobiology controversy was read into a right-left political axis needs to be revisited, possibly after all the participants are dead and therefore will shut up and let people less personally invested talk. There's no obvious degree to which a soft sociobiological view is in any way incompatible with left wing politics. And insisting that it is endangers left wing politics, as it holds out the possibility that if the scientific view changes enough, there will be no grounds for struggle or critique of political economy or whatever. But this is impossible. Human biology can only explain how beings like us, with all the capacities we are known to have, came about. No study of violence and reproductive success, or anything else, can banish the dimension of utopia as a basic constituent of the human experience. The threatened manner in which so many people respond to certain kinds of empirical research really does make you wonder about the constitution, and convictions, of the American academic left.
http://embodiedknowledges.blogspot.co...
My positive rating by no means puts me in the "Chagnon camp," let alone the "sociobiology camp," but it does indicate that I think some of the fair methodological criticisms aimed at Chagnon are not fatal. I also object to the idea that a Marxist orientation requires us to deny the possibility of violence over women as a stable trait of male humans, one that will even survive "after the revolution," as it were, when resource wars and conflicts are relatively solved. Isn't this the whole point of reasonable incarnations of "intersectionality" and all that? Class war, while the history of all heretofore existing civilizations, is not necessarily a sufficient explanation for all human behavior. Ferguson is right in his emphases; but they don't in any obvious way fully supplant Chagnon's descriptions. By positing that all knowable Yanamamo violence is due to competition over Western-introduced scarcity, the myth of a time of peaceful non-scarcity is preserved. Chagnon is right, to a degree many are unwilling to grant him, that political correctness guides some anthropological research.
To a degree none of the participants are willing to admit, a great bulk of the acrimony of the debate is over personalities. And while usually this focuses on Chagnon's alleged bullish manner, we should focus on some of his critics like Sahlins. When the Darkness book came out, it accused Chagnon of being a willing partner to genocide. In some of his writings of the time, Sahlins more or less brushes aside the seriousness and horror of this entirely cooked-up story. One almost gets the sense that, in Sahlins view, being accused of genocide serves Chagnon right for adopting a theoretical orientation contrary to his (how dare the student not follow the teacher).
Chagnon is not the most judicious commentator on the controversy, but it is madness to expect him to be. The accusations, wholly unfounded, are of an extremely painful nature. With the way commentators on all sides conflate the ten issues outlined in the linked blog post, making it difficult to separate the genocide accusation from the more legitimate methodological and theoretical disagreements, it is to be expected the accused might have difficulty parrying all the blows in a totally dispassionate manner. We're talking about a profession whose members responded with shock-horror at the way Chagnon allegedly violated a naming taboo, but barely flinched when a member of that profession was accused, on fraudulent evidence, of committing the worst crime known to their own culture. The reaction of some anthropologists to this episode does have the virtue of proving the point that civilization is wicked and violent in its own, highly mediated (and often, unmediated) ways. (Indeed, I'd hold [contra the reactionary feel good pop sci of Pinker] that current civilization is more violent than ever, but that's a different matter).
The way the sociobiology controversy was read into a right-left political axis needs to be revisited, possibly after all the participants are dead and therefore will shut up and let people less personally invested talk. There's no obvious degree to which a soft sociobiological view is in any way incompatible with left wing politics. And insisting that it is endangers left wing politics, as it holds out the possibility that if the scientific view changes enough, there will be no grounds for struggle or critique of political economy or whatever. But this is impossible. Human biology can only explain how beings like us, with all the capacities we are known to have, came about. No study of violence and reproductive success, or anything else, can banish the dimension of utopia as a basic constituent of the human experience. The threatened manner in which so many people respond to certain kinds of empirical research really does make you wonder about the constitution, and convictions, of the American academic left.
July 9, 2017
Napolean Chagnon is the most controversial anthropologist living today. His work on the Venezuelan Yanomamo tribe in the 1960s, then one of the last untouched tribes in the world, demonstrated that violence and warfare were endemic to their lives. He estimated that a large proportion of all make deaths came from violence, and that 20% of wives were abducted. He argued that the more kills a tribal member had, the more children he had, and that access to fertile females was one of the most common causes of tribal warfare. In effect, while other anthropologists were celebrating peaceful "Noble Savages," Chagnon was showing that tribal life was often nasty, brutish, and short. He was demonstrating that mankind itself might have been bred for war.
Despite what might seem like an unflattering description, Chagnon clearly loves the Yanomamo and his time with them. He describes in detail their beautiful funeral ceremonies, where the families had to dance around the funeral pyre and then drink the ashes of the fallen. He describes the "club fights" they occasionally used as a substitute for war, where two individuals would alternate hitting each other over the head with clubs until one fell. He also struggled to keep invasive Westerners and especially Western guns out of Yanomamo society, even as he flew in vaccines, eye ointments and cooking goods.
Yet Chagnon's arguments kicked up a dust storm in academic circles. This storm also swirled around the simultaneous claims of Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson's book "Sociobiology," published in 1975, which argued that much of human behavior, including fighting and kinship practices, had clear biological roots. Anthropologists dedicated to the "Nobel Savage" vision, or to Marxist claims that all human actions was only cultural, not biological, demanded that Chagnon be thrown out of conferences. They soon adopted the sleazy claims of journalist Patrick Tierney that Chagnon had started a measles epidemic among the Yanomamo to prove his "eugenicist" beliefs, and used accusations to bar him from receiving permits to continue studying the tribe. It was academic ideology and herd behavior at its worst.
Despite the impressive story straddling two worlds, the book itself is haphazardly written and often meandering, with innumerable irrelevant tangents. Chagnon's years of fighting about fighting have left their mark, and his work here is querulous in the extreme. But, as Chagnon himself recognizes, that is perhaps part of all of our nature. Many academics may deny it, but their efforts seem to prove the truth of their opponents. We do love a good fight.
Despite what might seem like an unflattering description, Chagnon clearly loves the Yanomamo and his time with them. He describes in detail their beautiful funeral ceremonies, where the families had to dance around the funeral pyre and then drink the ashes of the fallen. He describes the "club fights" they occasionally used as a substitute for war, where two individuals would alternate hitting each other over the head with clubs until one fell. He also struggled to keep invasive Westerners and especially Western guns out of Yanomamo society, even as he flew in vaccines, eye ointments and cooking goods.
Yet Chagnon's arguments kicked up a dust storm in academic circles. This storm also swirled around the simultaneous claims of Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson's book "Sociobiology," published in 1975, which argued that much of human behavior, including fighting and kinship practices, had clear biological roots. Anthropologists dedicated to the "Nobel Savage" vision, or to Marxist claims that all human actions was only cultural, not biological, demanded that Chagnon be thrown out of conferences. They soon adopted the sleazy claims of journalist Patrick Tierney that Chagnon had started a measles epidemic among the Yanomamo to prove his "eugenicist" beliefs, and used accusations to bar him from receiving permits to continue studying the tribe. It was academic ideology and herd behavior at its worst.
Despite the impressive story straddling two worlds, the book itself is haphazardly written and often meandering, with innumerable irrelevant tangents. Chagnon's years of fighting about fighting have left their mark, and his work here is querulous in the extreme. But, as Chagnon himself recognizes, that is perhaps part of all of our nature. Many academics may deny it, but their efforts seem to prove the truth of their opponents. We do love a good fight.
November 1, 2019
The first part, roughly 80% of the book, is about the author’s years doing field work among the Yanomamö people in the Amazon (mostly Venezuela). Super interesting, a bit chilling sometimes, and also sometimes hilariously funny. It’s a bit hard to keep track of all the names, as they are in Yanomamö language... which can be somewhat bewildering :)
A few stories I really liked: how the tribe/village he lived with at first gave him foul words instead of their names, so when he after six months(!!!) visited another village gave those villagers the laugh of the decade by referring to the former village inhabitants as «headman Long Dong, his wife Hairy Cunt and their son Asshole», etc. It’s juvenile humour, Yes, and oh so human, Yes, but holy crap, they kept the joke up for SIX MONTHS just to fool the weird hairy guy who stayed with them. The whole village. Six months. I’m dying.
He got more savvy after a while, though, and when his informants wanted to scare him away from going to visit another village further away (they kind of wanted to keep all his steel tools and fish hooks etc for themselves) by telling him about the «dragons» (I have forgotten the Yanomamö word he used, but snake-like river monsters) that would kill him if he went that way, he gave up convincing them that these monsters didn’t exist and rather insisted that in Michigan-human-village-his-home, he was known as quite the «dragon» killer, he even brought special bullets for them, just look... (those were bullets for big game animals). The tribe was annoyed but he did get some guides to take him to that other village.
More importantly, he has some very interesting observations about war, violence, family structure, authority in pre-state societies which I think it’s really stupid to ignore.
And then. The big postmodernism monster. Wish that too could be shot with special bullets for snake-like river monsters. The science/antiscience debate which seems to torture so to speak every academic dicipline, some more than others, mathemathics perhaps not so much, the social sciences and the humanities a lot.
That part of the book is not funny at all. Interesting, but totally without redeeming qualities. May the antiscience brigade lose in the end, but unfortunately this tribal war isn’t done yet.
A few stories I really liked: how the tribe/village he lived with at first gave him foul words instead of their names, so when he after six months(!!!) visited another village gave those villagers the laugh of the decade by referring to the former village inhabitants as «headman Long Dong, his wife Hairy Cunt and their son Asshole», etc. It’s juvenile humour, Yes, and oh so human, Yes, but holy crap, they kept the joke up for SIX MONTHS just to fool the weird hairy guy who stayed with them. The whole village. Six months. I’m dying.
He got more savvy after a while, though, and when his informants wanted to scare him away from going to visit another village further away (they kind of wanted to keep all his steel tools and fish hooks etc for themselves) by telling him about the «dragons» (I have forgotten the Yanomamö word he used, but snake-like river monsters) that would kill him if he went that way, he gave up convincing them that these monsters didn’t exist and rather insisted that in Michigan-human-village-his-home, he was known as quite the «dragon» killer, he even brought special bullets for them, just look... (those were bullets for big game animals). The tribe was annoyed but he did get some guides to take him to that other village.
More importantly, he has some very interesting observations about war, violence, family structure, authority in pre-state societies which I think it’s really stupid to ignore.
And then. The big postmodernism monster. Wish that too could be shot with special bullets for snake-like river monsters. The science/antiscience debate which seems to torture so to speak every academic dicipline, some more than others, mathemathics perhaps not so much, the social sciences and the humanities a lot.
That part of the book is not funny at all. Interesting, but totally without redeeming qualities. May the antiscience brigade lose in the end, but unfortunately this tribal war isn’t done yet.
July 31, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Noble Savages is a memoir by accomplished cultural anthropologist, Napoleon A. Chagnon, who did his field study for 30 years among the Yanomamö tribe in southern Venezuela.
I had a mixed of different feelings while reading this book i.e. amused, horrified, enraged, excited.
Chagnon is a no-nonsense scientist. He didn't romanticized the Yanomamö as an ideal, egalitarian society. Although he had immense joy living with them, he didn't hide the brutality committed by the Yanomamö (especially the men).
Revenge killing, nomohori (a trap where Yanomamö guests from neighboring villages are invited for a feast but are massacred while they were sleeping), female infanticide (in one incident, the head of the newborn was smashed against a big rock cracking the skull), gang rape of kidnapped women etc.
The last 3 chapters are about the decades-long conflict between Chagnon and a) the Salesian mission (Catholicism) and b) other anthropologists.
The Salesian mission hated him because Chagnon openly criticized the former for giving shotguns to the Yanomamö which were then used to commit inter-village murders, among many other despicable acts. His demographic data collection on the deaths and causes of death among Yanomamö also threatened the Salesian for it'll reveal the numerous deaths cause by shotguns.
Anthropologists, on the other hand, accused Chagnon of exaggerating the violence, contributing to the violence (by giving machetes and axes [madohe] as payment for answering research questions) etc. But the one heinous sin that they can't forgive him is his application of sociobiology (as proposed by E. O. Wilson) in cultural anthropology.
And the publication of Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney in 2000, a fraudulent accusations against Chagnon (and other scientists & journalists) gave ammunition to these anthropologists to character assasinate him.
This is a great book to reflect on morality. How professional jealousy can cause your accomplished colleagues to destroy you. How the mission to "save the souls" can cause even more suffering.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Read from 21-31 July
Noble Savages is a memoir by accomplished cultural anthropologist, Napoleon A. Chagnon, who did his field study for 30 years among the Yanomamö tribe in southern Venezuela.
I had a mixed of different feelings while reading this book i.e. amused, horrified, enraged, excited.
Chagnon is a no-nonsense scientist. He didn't romanticized the Yanomamö as an ideal, egalitarian society. Although he had immense joy living with them, he didn't hide the brutality committed by the Yanomamö (especially the men).
Revenge killing, nomohori (a trap where Yanomamö guests from neighboring villages are invited for a feast but are massacred while they were sleeping), female infanticide (in one incident, the head of the newborn was smashed against a big rock cracking the skull), gang rape of kidnapped women etc.
The last 3 chapters are about the decades-long conflict between Chagnon and a) the Salesian mission (Catholicism) and b) other anthropologists.
The Salesian mission hated him because Chagnon openly criticized the former for giving shotguns to the Yanomamö which were then used to commit inter-village murders, among many other despicable acts. His demographic data collection on the deaths and causes of death among Yanomamö also threatened the Salesian for it'll reveal the numerous deaths cause by shotguns.
Anthropologists, on the other hand, accused Chagnon of exaggerating the violence, contributing to the violence (by giving machetes and axes [madohe] as payment for answering research questions) etc. But the one heinous sin that they can't forgive him is his application of sociobiology (as proposed by E. O. Wilson) in cultural anthropology.
And the publication of Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney in 2000, a fraudulent accusations against Chagnon (and other scientists & journalists) gave ammunition to these anthropologists to character assasinate him.
This is a great book to reflect on morality. How professional jealousy can cause your accomplished colleagues to destroy you. How the mission to "save the souls" can cause even more suffering.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Read from 21-31 July
October 28, 2024
This big book is fascinating in content and writing style. If Napoleon Chagnon has taken 15 years to finish this testimony of his decades studying the little-known Yanomamo people of Venezuela and Brazil it is not only because he had so much to tell about their way of life but also because of "an extraordinary academic scandal" that exploded in the national and international press shortly after he signed the contract to write the book. He wanted first to defend himself from severe and unfair accusations by colleagues and missionary groups more concerned about their reputation and pre-conceived views than about scientifically collected evidence gathered living next to these people under extraordinarily harsh conditions.
Chagnon's opponents especially resented his way of observing the Yanomamo, this acculturated stone-age people, through the lens of sociobiology made popular by Edward O. Wilson. Shocking as it may seem to anthropologists who favour cultural explanations over natural ones, people descend from animals and these primitive people offered a clear example. But this is the material of the last third of the book. The most important part is the narration of his life among the different, and often rival, villages, In the Amazonian jungle and his vivid description of an incredibly distinct way of life from ours. But who knows, we might have had much in common when we were stone-age people.
Among so many things, it stands out that the Yanomamo (at least those studied by Chagnon some thirty years ago) were fierce, engaging in frequent mortal raids to other villages to appropriate women. As individuals, they could be charming, but as a group, they also held treacherous feasts where they invited other groups in apparently innocent and joyful celebrations and then started to massacre them by surprise to avenge past (real or imaginary) murders.
Chagnon's opponents especially resented his way of observing the Yanomamo, this acculturated stone-age people, through the lens of sociobiology made popular by Edward O. Wilson. Shocking as it may seem to anthropologists who favour cultural explanations over natural ones, people descend from animals and these primitive people offered a clear example. But this is the material of the last third of the book. The most important part is the narration of his life among the different, and often rival, villages, In the Amazonian jungle and his vivid description of an incredibly distinct way of life from ours. But who knows, we might have had much in common when we were stone-age people.
Among so many things, it stands out that the Yanomamo (at least those studied by Chagnon some thirty years ago) were fierce, engaging in frequent mortal raids to other villages to appropriate women. As individuals, they could be charming, but as a group, they also held treacherous feasts where they invited other groups in apparently innocent and joyful celebrations and then started to massacre them by surprise to avenge past (real or imaginary) murders.
August 25, 2019
Fascinating story of a long productive research career. Not as productive as it might have been though in view of the controversy surrounding the author. In addition to chronicling his experiences among the Yanomami, Noble Savages also chronicles Chagnon's experiences among his fellow cultural anthropologists -- many of them highly charged and negative in the extreme. Noble Savages is a self-serving account, and must be read with a due grain of salt. But it is a well-documented account and, as such, puts the burden on Chagnon's detractors to refute it. My guess is the truth's not gray but substantially black or white, and that Chagnon is innocent of the charges that were leveled against him over his long career and, in particular, in the book by journalist Patrick Tierney. It's appalling to read about this long-unfolding chapter, and chilling to think it sourced to a conflict of ideas. But then, most wrongs and conflicts do. I hope Chagnon's enjoying a further measure of success and peace at this late stage in his life and career. And I hope his field has taken the lessons of the Chagnon affair to heart. It wouldn't surprise me to learn it has not...
November 13, 2018
Chagnon went and lived with one of the last uncontacted tribes in the Amazon off and on for many years. He tried to live by many of their customs when he interacted with them. I wished there was more about the language and a lot less about the arguments he got into with other anthropologists. Chagnon just seems fascinated by interpersonal conflict of any kind. It would have been nice to see some of his moral reasoning, too: why did he feel interfering by giving antibiotics and hatchets okay, but not feel that doing even more to preserve life was morally obligatory?
The tribes struck me as basically like street gangs: always fighting with their neighbors, mainly concerned with looking tough and disrespect, constantly taking revenge, defining themselves by minor differences, following strong scary leaders, etc...
The tribes struck me as basically like street gangs: always fighting with their neighbors, mainly concerned with looking tough and disrespect, constantly taking revenge, defining themselves by minor differences, following strong scary leaders, etc...
March 21, 2020
I've been meaning to read this for years, just to hear the other account of the controversy. It has some interesting details abou Yanomamo politics, though many are exaggerated, and all are told through an obviously biased lens. The early chapters are bogged down by names of the Yanomamo tribes and their geographic locations, so I stopped keeping track of which did what and focused on the actions. Chagnon clearly treated them very poorly, perhaps without even realizing, and exploited their want of certain resources. Granted, they might have given him a hard time in return. I appreciated that he clarified his stance on the unliklihod of genetic factors for violence in favor of upbringing and necessity. However, this doesn't excuse his behavior while living amongst the tribes. This book lost a star for ease of reading, and another for his poor behavior and bias in telling the story.
January 21, 2020
Fascinating account of his life researching the Yanomamo by the controversial anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who died recently. His work has provoked fierce controversy in the anthropological community, and while initially being received hospitably and assisted by the Salesian Brothers order in Venezuela, he was later villified and blocked from doing further research in the area. Given that one of his critics, Jacques Lizot, who continued to work in the area, was later exposed as a prolific paedophile, and recent CNN exposes on how the Salesian Brothers failed to expel, but continued to move some of their members, known paedophiles, around different areas under their control, you have to wonder if that was behind some of the virulent opposition to Chagnon.
October 19, 2020
This memoir is painful to read. It contains an in-depth description of the politicization of science in the field of cultural anthropology. Well, I'm proud I had the stamina to face it and skip only a few passages. I read 95% of it. I'm surprised I found an indirect confirmation in this book which supports the weirdest of insights I have heard of recently: In the US, the battle between racism and anti-racism is so out of control that anti-racism has become as harmful as racism. I'm from Germany and live with a US-American partner in China. It seems every territory on Earth has it's own flavour of insanity. How comforting. We are all made from the same stuff.
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