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The Yanomami are hunter-gatherers, with no private property and very limited material wealth. They enjoy the equality of subsistence living. Until modern times
by delichon 1y ago
The Yanomami are hunter-gatherers, with no private property and very limited material wealth. They enjoy the equality of subsistence living. Until modern times they were very stable. But apparently that kind of equality goes away when wealth appears.
And even they follow the usual tribal pattern of making war with their neighbors and taking women and children.
- defrost 1y agoThat "usual pattern" is subject to great debate: Although some Yanomami really have been engaged in intensive warfare and other kinds of bloody conflict, this violence is not an expression of Yanomami culture itself. It is, rather, a product of specific historical situations: The Yanomami make war not because Western culture is absent, but because it is present, and present in certain specific forms. Their violence was observed by people following a wave of slave-hunting expeditions by the conquistadors and bandeirantes.
- yyyk 1y agoThe Nobel Savage is always pushed back to the time before any observations. One day we'll have some ancient findings, at which point they'll blame Marajoaran colonization or something.
- defrost 1y agoIt's not one or the other, the Savage Savage is just as dully ridiculous as its counter. Bursts of savagery interspersed with long dull periods of not much in the record layers is more the norm. Either way it's a clear and obvious bias that almost all first contacts by Europeans were observed under unusual stress.