Print List Price:	$20.00
Kindle Price:	$15.73 Save $4.27 (21%)
	includes VAT*
	Price set by seller.

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share <Embed>

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

Follow the Author

Napoleon A. Chagnon

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

by Napoleon A. Chagnon (Author)

99 customer reviews

See all 3 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$15.73

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$17.50

$9.54

$4.00

Paperback

"Please retry"

$10.98

$10.00

$2.69

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.

Length: 545 pages

Word Wise: Enabled

Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Lawrence H. Keeley

76

Kindle Edition
$9.99
Alice Dreger

142

Kindle Edition
$13.99
David Reich

163

Kindle Edition
$14.99
Bryan Douglas Caplan

79

Kindle Edition
$18.19
Joseph Henrich

36

Kindle Edition
$13.70
Henry Kissinger

20

Kindle Edition
$3.82

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
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray:

Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Not Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #444,587 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #90 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Social Scientists & Psychologists
- #339 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Social Scientists & Psychologists
- #407 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Scientists

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?

Be the first video

Your name here

99 customer reviews

Review this product

Write a customer review

Showing 1-7 of 99 reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

N. Peritore

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

Helpful

Comment

Beaumont Vance

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

Helpful

Comment

Jared

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

Helpful

Comment

J. V. Simson

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

Helpful

Comment

Amazon Customer

Must read

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

Helpful

Comment

J.J.M.

Insightful

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

Helpful

Comment

B-Man

An Important Tale

December 14, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

One of the first Anthropology books i read as an undergrad was Chagnon's book on the Yanomamo: the Fierce People. Only now, after taking his effort for granted, i find that this book was a landmark not only for finding one of the last truly aboriginal peoples on the planet, but for its honest interpretations of its implications. Aboriginal and native does NOT equal mild and peace loving, with a wonderful social contract. In the wild, we are just as uncivilized as we are in civilization. I had no idea he was fighting an entire enterprise of "progressives" who wanted to rewrite history as well as human nature in search of utopia. What a great read, and an amazing life. I applaud him for his honesty, and his perseverance. Perhaps, like him and many others, it is time for us to wake up and smell the coffee- which is not what is being sold to us by the so called progressive elite, the progressive media, and our progressive politicians, but especially the currently well ensconced progressive educational hierarchy- from elementary schools all the way through (perhaps even especially in the most elite) universities.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists

Set up a giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Lawrence H. Keeley

76

Kindle Edition
$9.99
E.T. Bell

87

Kindle Edition
$14.99
Dean Buonomano

28

Kindle Edition
$9.61
Shirley Jackson

67

Kindle Edition
$8.99
Shirley Jackson

17

Kindle Edition
$7.99

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.

Would you like to report poor quality or formatting in this book? Click here

Would you like to report this content as inappropriate? Click here

Do you believe that this item violates a copyright? Click here

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

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

Customers who bought this item also bought

Sponsored products related to this item

Product details