Your name Student Name Professor Name Subject 22 September, 2012 Yanomamo Book Review a.

Subsistence

The Yanomamo is a group of the American Indian people with a total number of 27 thousand people. The main countries of settlements are: Venezuela - 15 thousand people, Brazil - 12 thousand people. The Yanomamo is a group of the American Indian tribes, consisting of four subgroups of the Indians which live in the rainforests of the southern Venezuela and the northern Brazil. Each subgroup speaks the language close to the others. The languages, entering the Makrochibcha language family, are the following: Sanema in the north of the region, Ninam in a southeastern part, Yanomam or Yanomamo in the southwest. The word Yanomamo means simply people. At present, the population of the Indians of the Yanomamo tribes consists of about twenty thousand people, twelve thousand of whom speak the Yanomamo language. Until the 19th century the Yanomamo lived within a small region of the Guiana Plateau on the border of Venezuela and Brazil (the Parims mountains), later they were settled in the south of Venezuela and in the close regions of Brazil. They were absolutely cut off from the civilization up to the middle of the 20th century. The discovery of the deposits of radioactive minerals on the settlement territories of the Yanomamo, construction of the mines and highways negatively affected the life of tribes. The part of the Yanomamo was lost from the diseases brought by builders; many of them left their native places and moved to the coast of Orinoco and Riu Negru. In 1982, the decision on the creation of the Yanomamo reservations was made.

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The American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, studying the life and customs of Yanomamo in the 1970s, came to the conclusion that the splitting of a community can be expected when a number of its members reach one hundred people. At a number of 40-60 people in a village can put 10 soldiers as a fighting group for the protection against the attacks of neighbors; however, they are not enough in the conditions of a mutual distrust, insidiousness and the unpredictability, reigning in the relationship between communities. Twice a bigger number of the fighters corresponding to a total number of 100 people makes a group of people less vulnerable and provides more successful attacks on neighbors for the kidnapping of local women. However, the probability of internal contentions sharply increases at a further growth of a community, and the community is usually split up at this stage. The villages can be as small as 40 to 50 people or as large as 300 people, but in all cases there are many more children and babies than there are adults. This is true of most primitive populations and of our own demographic past. Life expectancy is short (Chagnon: 1996). b. Religion. The traditional beliefs of the Yanomamo people are based on the idea that the natural world and the world of spirits represent the unified force. The nature creates everything and is sacred. The Indians believe that their destiny and the destinies of all people are inseparably linked with environment. If the environment collapses, the mankind also dies. A shaman is a spiritual leader of the Yanomamo. The religious beliefs include the cult of the Moon and other spirits. The religious accessory of believers includes the traditional beliefs; however, Christianity is also widely spread.

Your name c. Family (kinship system, residence pattern, marriage practices).

The author of the book Yanomamo Napoleon Chagnon states that the people of this tribe always live in the state of war: even if there is enough food for them, they fight for women. The man, who killed more enemies and took their wives, receives the honorary title Unokayi and obtains the right to expand his harem. According to the opinion of the scientist, a zoological law, which says that the strongest species can transfer his genetic potential, is revealed. Moreover, the strongest men in the tribe have more authority than their quieter fellow tribesmen. As a result, they have more wives. The Yanomamo are engaged in agriculture (cultivation of bananas, palm trees), hunting, fishing and collecting. They are settled in the communities with on average 100 120 people. They live in large communal huts called shabono. The forms of shabono are various: with a span roof and 4 walls, canopies without a front wall and with a pent roof, a hut with a span roof without a front wall, etc. The organization of the marriage unions is vital not only for the maintenance of strong links between allies, but also is necessary for the preservation of peace between families. Many girls are promised to certain men at early age. They marry early. The best marriage union considered the union of bilateral cross-cousins which help to create the strong relations between the families and villages. The social dynamics within villages are involved with giving and receiving marriageable girls. Marriages are arranged by older kin, usually men, such as brothers, uncles and their father. It is a political process, for girls are promised in marriage while they are young and the men who do this attempt to create alliances with other men via marriage exchanges (Chagnon: 1996). The deficiency of women makes them a much desired goods. Men imperceptibly creep to another shabono, looking out for a woman who is gathering brushwood.

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Accompanied with the armed spouse, she goes home with a heavy burden; suddenly her husband can be struck by a hail of arrows, and a woman is taken prisoner. After that the participants of the attack calm down and rape a woman in turn. Having brought a woman to their shabono, they transfer her to other men. She goes from one man to the other until it falls to her lot to be somebodys wife. d. Economy and Trade Trade is another important aspect of the life of the Yanomamo Indians. It helps to reduce the risk of the initiation of the war between villages. Very often people in one village make such goods which are extremely necessary in the other village. In this case the inhabitants of the second village depending on the first one, exchange their wives for the necessary goods. At present, about 95 percent of the Yanomamo Indians live deeply in the woods of Amazonia, and only 5 percent - on the shores of big rivers. Unlike the wood people, the people of the rivers lead a more settled way of life and provide themselves with fishing and trade of such goods as a canoe and fishing hooks with other villages. The wood people are engaged in hunting and collecting. Moreover, they are good gardeners. They work for about two hours a day at their gardens. The grown-up cultures include sweet potato, bananas, sugar cane, and tobacco. All this, however, does not give a food rich with proteins to the Indians. Usually men are engaged in hunting, and women - in collecting. Men cover big distances during a search for a game and can be absent in the village for the whole week. Their location in the depth of the jungle is very important for a survival of the Yanomamo Indians. e. Political Leadership System A social life of the Yanomamo, as well as the majority of other American Indian tribes of Amazonia, is built on the relationship bonds. The vestige if a dual division and a maternal sex are characteristic for the social organization of the Yanomamo. Each group is

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headed by the leaders who in most cases are represented by the elders or equal among equal. Nevertheless, there are cases when one person concentrated the whole power over a group in his hands, becoming a typical autocrat. Thus, it is necessary to note that leadership in the group does not free a leader from daily work, such as land clearing from the jungles, hunting and fishing. Because of hostility in a group and between groups, the families need sons who are necessary for the heads of a family not only for bringing the bag, but also for protecting shabono and for participating in the attacks on the other settlements, supporting a father in fights. The need for the sons is so big that women quite often kill girls, whom they delivered, in the wood outside of shabono. Therefore, it is better to kill a newborn girl than to bring her home and to be kicked by a husband. As a result, there are more men than women in groups; it involves additional contentions between men. The vicious circle feeds animosity. The male roughness is run to the extremity. f. Warfare The bloody fights are the evidences of the strongest stress in a group. Almost every Yanomamo man is a rowdy. In order to show own bellicosity, men tonsure their tops like medieval monks. However, according to Napoleon Chagnon, a complete antithesis of monastic mildness is illustrated by a grid of scars on the head skin, which is similar to a road map. In a word, a rather slightest occasion is enough for the community to split up into two conflicting groups. After that one of them leaves and puts a new banana plantation. However, settling on a new place, a lot of time is necessary; therefore, it is better to unite with other small group. Such unions allow making attacks on neighbors or on the former native settlements.

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Historically, about one third of the tribe was killed during wars. Napoleon Chagnon created the stereotype about the Yanomamo tribe as about fierce people, who are all the time at the sate of war. A military hold of Yanomamo, which reminds a chimpanzee pattern, is called Wayu Huu. The raid of the tribe starts when a group of 10-20 men agrees to kill the enemies. Having passed through the ceremonial rituals preparing for a raid, they go to the enemy village. The diversionary group reconnoiters a situation, silently waiting for the lonely victim in an ambush. If the participants of attack cannot find an isolated individual, they simply let out a hail of arrows towards the village and escape. The second military hold of the Yanomamo is even more awful, according to the western ethical standards. It is called Nomohori - a cowardly trick. In this scenario the men pretend that the inhabitants of the enemy village are their allies, and invite them to festival. As soon as the guests completely lose care and rest, the hosts kill them, splitting skulls with axes, beating enemies with cudgels and striking with arrows. All men are killed immediately, and women are taken prisoners. This tactics bears a strong resemblance to similar deceptive reception, throughout centuries used by some Scottish mountaineers, and the examples of cowardly tricks in a broad sense can be found in the history of all existing cultures. g. Micromovements and macromovements In the 20th century the history of Yanomamo tribes is filled with a number of the tragic episodes which have not been connected with the traditional intertribal conflicts. Since the middle of the 1970s the territory of the Yanomamo tribes started to be filled with Garimpeyros - non-illegal gold prospectors who were looking for gold in new, earlier undeveloped areas on the border of Brazil and Venezuela. In those places where newcomers settled, they killed Indians with whom they entered conflict because of the lands. Besides, the

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technology of gold mining, used by the gold prospectors, led to the environmental degradation. In 1990 the territory of Yanomamo was occupied by 40 000 of Garimpeyros. g. How did you like this book and what did it teach you about our own society? The book written by a well-known author Napoleon Chagnon impressed me greatly. The author vividly described the life the Yanomamo. I got to know that they have the main goal of the military raids on neighbors - kidnapping of women. A monogamous marriage in this society is not in honor, and the majority of men have several wives, mainly, by a violent way. At the same time it is difficult to imagine that the ideals of love and fidelity can play a little essential role in the organization of a family life if a woman is considered as a thing which always can be stolen in the next community by force. Certainly, not all segmentary societies have the barefaced violence ranks high in the sphere of the marriage relations, like at Indians of the Yanomamo. As far an economic value of polygyny as a way of the enhancement of a number of workers in a family and, respectively, its material welfare, this principle remains practically in all societies with a primitive economy. As the majority of aliens got on the territory of Amazonia on the big rivers, the Yanomamo had the possibility to continue the isolated life up to the recent time. Due to this situation they kept the traditional culture and consciousness which was lost by many other Amazonian Indians.

Your name Works Cited Chagnon, N. (1996). Yanomamo. Harcourt Brace; 5th edition. 304 p. You Tube. A Man Called Bee: Studying the Yanomamo.