Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists
Chagnon, author of a best-selling college textbook on the isolated Yanomamo tribe of the Amazon basin, was branded a heretic for violating the received wisdom of anthropology—that societies untouched by modern civilization are generally peaceful, and when they’re not, the reasons stem from fighting over scarce resources. After living among them for five years, Chagnon found the Yanomamo fierce fighters over women. He would ultimately spend 35 years studying the tribe, drawing on the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, and biology to offer a complex portrait of the isolated tribe. His study came at a time of turmoil within his profession as political correctness and growing activism on behalf of native populations conflicted with more scientific and Darwinian notions of natural selection. Chagnon is as critical of his own early naïveté in living among the Yanomamo as he is of cultural anthropology itself, which he describes as more religious than scientific. This is a fascinating look at a severely isolated tribe as it evolved into a more complex society as well as a scathing look at the tensions within an academic discipline in transition. --Vanessa Bush