Mr. Chagnon contends that his detailed observations of Yanomami violence offer proof that human nature is inherently antagonistic. His opponents, in turn, have accused him of turning the Yanomami into cartoons of Stone Age savagery. It accuses him of cooking his data, cozying up to nefarious gold-mining interests, causing tribal conflicts by carelessly handing out machetes, pressuring Indians to break cultural taboos and faking scenes in film documentaries so exploitative that they deserve to be called snuff films. Mr. Chagnon and his allies have mounted a vigorous counterattack since the book's contents were described in a widely circulated e-mail written by anthropologists Leslie Sponsel and Terry Turner. After medical experts posted statements on the Internet undermining Mr. Tierney's vaccine argument, Mr. Turner last week withdrew the genocide charge.
Anthropology is riven by two opposing worldviews.
Sociobiologists, who believe that humans across the globe share an essential nature shaped by evolution, love Mr. Chagnon's work. It confirms their suspicion that men from South America to Serbia are driven by aggression. Cultural anthropologists, who emphasize the importance of local context and recoil at universal statements about human behavior, think Mr. Chagnon's conclusions are pure fantasy. Sadly, most anthropology is off the scale in post modernist lunacy. There's this orthodoxy that says human nature is a blank slate.