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Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists by [Chagnon, Napoleon A.]

Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists Kindle Edition

by Napoleon A. Chagnon (Author)

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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.

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Product details

File Size: 11767 KB
Print Length: 545 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0684855119
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (February 19, 2013)
Publication Date: February 19, 2013
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B006VJN2FE
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #395,758 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #74 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Social Scientists & Psychologists
- #230 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Social Scientists & Psychologists
- #386 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Scientists

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The real Indiana Jones.

May 11, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Napoleon Chagnon is the greatest living anthropologist and writes a gripping true great adventure story. He also shows the ugly side of academia, which one of my students called a "sheltered workshop for Aspergers cases." Chagnon produced a boxcar full of field notes from decades of studying the Yanomami indians of Venezuela and Brazil systematically surveying village demography and compiling geneologies and life histories of generations, all this in the service of an authentic evolutionary biological approach to anthropology, turning the discipline into a true science instead of a literary and folkloric study of customs and oddities.

Think of how many contacts with pristine peoples were lost to science because the anthropologist wanted to study witchcraft or garden magic instead of biological and cultural indicators of fitness (successful reproduction), kin selection, reciprocal altruism, war and conflict, power relations among men and among women, marriage systems, village fission and fusion, etc. Chagnon was bitterly, brutally, and unfairly attacked by prominent colleagues who misrepresented and lied about his arduous and dangerous filed work, tried to get him fired, attacked his funding, usually people who never left their air conditioned offices, and prefered to "deconstruct" their colleagues work instead of contributing something new by learning dificult languages and sweating in the field.

If there existed an Nobel Prize for anthropology, Chagnon should be the first recipient. His years of work and risk document a stone age people rapidly being corrupted, assimilated, and exterminated by bigoted missionaries, crooked politicians, miitary and greedy invaders. This is heroic scientific work, and an excellent read to boot. Put it on your must read list.

14 people found this helpful

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Chilling expose on politics in academia

April 9, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I could insert a few other fields in place of "anthropology" and the story here would be accurate. Political and philosophical beliefs bend the science to a form of advocacy. Chang on is a brave man to have fought this fight.

that aside, his stories about the native tribes and the implications are fascinating. I am a reader or Jared Diamond's work as well, and for some reason, Chagnon's book here is more credible and more insightful...perhaps because of his devotion to data. This is a must read for anyone who is interested in human culture, government, social dynamics or sociobiology along with the incredible works of E O Wilson. A must read.

4 people found this helpful

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Anthropology required reading

April 20, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is probably the most important book in anthropology and I am not exaggerating. I remember learning just a bit about Chagnon when I got an anthropology degree. I wish I had learned more then, but at least now we have his work summarized in his own words. We are very fortunate that he studied the yanomamo when he did. He collected data meticulously and scientifically. That data can be extrapolated to learn so much about our cultural past. Chagnon summarizes much of it.

The best aspects of the book are when he talks about other cultural anthropologists. In my own words, so many are left-wing ideologues that they have effectively supplanted the field. Chagnon lived it. He has the incredible story of it. Again this is a must read for anthropologists.

4 people found this helpful

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Brutality and Sexism at a Fundamental Level

February 12, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a truly enlightening book, and one I have quoted many times since reading it. I must say, though, that it gave my basic human optimism a real bruising. Still, the degree of aggression that seems to go on in this primitive society, and the lethal fights over women, put war and sexism in a whole new light in terms of human psychology and culture.

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

May 14, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I highly recommend this book. It is clear, well written, entertaining, and informative. When Chagnon recounts his experiences of arriving at the Bisaasi-teri village, the harsh tropical environment, the hazards, odors, heat, humidity, disease, language bariers, culture shock, and absence of all the niceties of modern living, it becomes apparent that there is a clear distinction between evidence based academics who conduct real fieldwork and the lazy armchair academics who conceal their lack of knowledge, evidence, clear understanding, deductive reasoning, and critical thinking with incoherent, jargon laden, gibberish nonsense. Chagnon is an examplar of how academics should conduct their research and arrive at their conclusions.

4 people found this helpful

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A Triumph of Science Over Institutional Prejudice

February 27, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book is an adventure, a chronicle of scientific discovery, and a cautionary tale about what happens when evidence collides with pre-conceived notions. I was the United States Ambassador to Venezuela, 1990-93, and came to know of Napoleon Chagnon and his work with the Yanomamo on the Venezuelan-Brazilian border. Out of curiousity, I looked carefully into his background. Conclusion: Controversial, with defined 'enemies' within academia and a certain local religious community. But, clearly, also the pioneer in his field and surely correct in his conclusions (backed by acres of evidence collected over decades in the field). I had thought jealous backbiting was most highly developed within government bureaucracies like the ones with which I was familiar, but the anthropologists Chagnon describes are in a class apart. As an outsider to the discipline, and with no personal turf or old theories to defend, I am confident of this judgment. And, now, delighted to read the whole story. If someone has done comparable research that points in a different direction, I would be happy to read that book too.

Michael Skol
U.S. Foreign Service Officer-retired
Former American Ambassador to Venezuela

124 people found this helpful

Comment

March 16, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I agree with and appreciate Chagnon's scientific evolutionary approach to documenting and describing the Yanomamoe. Interpretations of the data will differ and some will disagree with Chagnon's methods, but he made a tremendous effort and collected invaluable data.
When you read of the reactions of some anthropologists to Chagnon's work, it is easy to see that as far as we may be removed from the Yanomamoe, we are not so different after all.

One person found this helpful

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