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Noble Savages

  • Writer: Michael Connolly
    Michael Connolly
  • Sep 20
  • 1 min read

Updated: Oct 20

Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanamamö and the Anthropologists by Napoleon A. Chagnon, Simon & Schuster, 2013. 


Yanamamö

The author describes the many years he spent among the Yanamamö tribes in Venezuela. In the 1960s there were 25,000 Yanamamö people spread among 250 villages. He writes about the Yanamamö language, name taboos, genealogy (kinship relations), tribal history and geography. 


Marxist Anthropology

The Marxist anthropology establishment believed that indigenous warfare was the result of Western colonialism, capitalism, and fighting over land. But Chagnon found that this was not true among the Yanamamö, who fight mainly by raiding other villages for women.


Persecuting Ed Wilson

The Marxist anthropology establishment saw the book Sociobiology by  Edward O Wilson as being racist. Chagnon supported E. O. Wilson.


Suppresion of Dissent

The Marxist anthropology establishment suppresses dissent, and resembles a religion. If you disagree, you are portrayed as being unethical. 


Persecuting Chagnon

Chagnon published an article in Science in 1988 that was criticized by the Brazilian Anthropological Association for being racist, for faking data, and for prompting Brazil to separate their Yanamamö into 21 small reservations. Patrick Tierney in 2000 published a book called Darkness in El Dorado, which blamed Chagnon and medical geneticist James V. Neel  for the 1968 Yanamamö measles epidemic. 

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