The vegetable biomass constitutes a valuable resource, and the area provides a home for tribes whose way of life would disappear with the forest. Much attention has centred around the effects of the changes upon the Yanomamo, and here we look at their way of life as reported by Napoleon A. Chagnon, an anthropologist who lived among them for some four years. They live by a combination of horticulture and foraging. Each man clears his own land and cultivates it himself although chiefs, who have to produce more to meet their obligation to provide hospitality, may receive help. Like Marshall Sahlins' Aborigines these people earn their living with about three hours' work daily, and each village can produce all it needs.
Life expectancy is still short, and infant mortality high.
Although Chagnon says nothing about any regular practice of infanticide, there is no obvious reason for thinking this instance exceptional. They treat the fine distinction, between their almost- complete lack of costume and total nakedness, with the seriousness we allot to our own nudity taboos. Those who follow customs do not always like them, and Chagnon suggests this topic deserves more anthropological attention than it has yet received. Engaged for much of the year in regular garden-work, the Yanomamo give little sign of the casual unpredictability characteristic of foragers. They also lack the modesty often ascribed to people living the primitive life, believing themselves if not the only people on earth then at least the finest, any other races being no more than degenerate copies.