Ed writes: Re: the Yanonamo. its worth remembering with these examples that about 90% of anthropology is completely made up. Its not like someone is going to check. What is most likely is that there probably isn’t a tribe called the “Yanonamo”, or if there is, they don’t behave any differently from other tribes of people living far from cities. Its best to approach these things as fables.
I would agree with this on one level, and that is that many other primitive groups are also quite violent also and the Yanonamo are not the only ones.
There is a tribe called Yanonamo, and they do live in Brazil and Venezuela. Really it is not so much a tribe as an ethnic group that lives in widely scattered villages for hundreds of square miles all over the rain forest in little villages that don’t have much contact with each other. However, they all speak the same language.
Chagnon’s book is correct. Others have gone back and studied this group and have recorded exactly the same findings that Chagnon did. The charges against Chagnon are fabricated by Cultural Left anthropologists who are upset because Chagnon made their precious non-White 3rd World noble savage choir boys look pretty bad. It is charged that he set up different men and provoked them into fighting each other, but it’s not true. There was no need for it, as there was so much violence anyway. Chagnon is one of the world’s greatest anthropologists, and it is sad that he was treated this way.