The Emperor’s new suit in the Garden of Eden, and other wild guesses Why can’t Napoleon Chagnon prove anything? By Stephen Corry Napoleon Chagnon’s latest book, ‘Noble Savages’, is a synopsis of his work with the Yanomami Indians of Amazonia, and is intended for non-specialists. This anthropologist is key to the recent revival of what Corry calls the ‘Brutal Savage’ myth. Chagnon contends that he holds the scientific truth, saying that his critics, especially those who have worked with the same Indians, downplay their violence. Corry shows how Chagnon makes unsupported claims, quotes from dubious sources, misrepresents his own data, and contradicts himself. Corry points out how close Chagnon was to United States officials, and how his promulgation of the ‘Brutal Savage’ underscores that of fundamentalist missionaries. Corry argues that Chagnon’s characterizations are unscientific and dangerous. Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker’s Brutal Savage, and so should be sermon – that ‘warfare’ is ‘chronic’ in looked at in detail. most tribal societies, as well as prehistoric ones, and that it Before doing so, let’s get some minor diminished with the arrival of the points out of the way. The least state – relies in good part on important is that he confuses the Napoleon Chagnon and his ideas two organizations, Survival 3 about the Yanomami. He is the most International and Cultural Survival, controversial anthropologist in though it certainly shows sloppy America, and had he spent his life fact-checking. doing something other than The more surprising aspect about promoting his studies of this Chagnon is his lifestyle. He requires Amazon tribe (which he calls prodigious quantities of stuff, 1 ‘Yanomamö’), it’s difficult to including ‘trade goods’ far in excess imagine that Diamond or Pinker of what most anthropologists would would have nearly as much traction consider necessary, or could afford.4 with their ‘Brutal Savage’ myth. These are primarily large numbers In that sense, Chagnon’s new of steel axes, machetes and cooking popular book, sarcastically entitled pots, used to pay Yanomami to give ‘Noble Savages: My Life Among Two him the information he seeks. He Dangerous Tribes – the Yanomamö hardly treads lightly; for example, and the Anthropologists’,2 can be when traveling in his motorized taken as one part of a trilogy dugout, he also loads his metal boat, together with Diamond and Pinker. rather like a large motorhome Although it hit the bookstores last – carrying a small car. He needs and is clearly intended as a Yanomami ‘bearers’ (my word, not retrospective score-settling with his his), partly to transport all these many critics – Chagnon’s revelations things, but also to build his houses, are primal to the renaissance of the and carry out his bidding. He orders them around with no hint that he is a 1 guest in their territory. On the Of course, none of this affects contrary, he constantly presses them whether or not his theories might be to his will.5 right. Though even if you think they are, no one can deny that Chagnon He doesn’t make it easy for them, or makes extrapolations into himself. He has to carry, or have transparently unsupported 6 carried, his preserved foods, even to surmises. remote areas. As well as a camera, he needs a Polaroid with its bulky and For example, he doesn’t explain how expensive film; as well as one he could come up with two sweeping shotgun, he needs two. Even if they generalizations on his first day of wanted to emulate him, few fieldwork in 1964. Arriving after a anthropologists would have the fight has ended, he asks his resources. evangelical missionary friend to teach him his very first – perhaps Another surprise is that for someone prophetic – Yanomami words, ‘Don’t who has long promoted himself as do that. Your hands are dirty.’10 He an Indiana Jones figure, he often then immediately decides that appears out of his depth, even ‘native warfare… was a chronic floundering. He’s candid about this: threat’ (his emphasis) and that ‘most he fails to keep insects out of his Yanomamö arguments and fights peanut butter and fungus out of his started over women.’ He spends the loin cloth, gets mad when the rest of his book – and life, for that Indians play tricks on him, and matter – trying to substantiate this 7 upsets just about everyone. The blitzkrieg insight, drawing it out Yanomami have reason enough to be much further, and concluding it dismayed, not least by his data ‘seems’ that is how all tribal societies gathering which plays on their were, until they lost their ‘pristine’ 8 enmities. To cap it all, Chagnon status. Apart from his kinship nearly shoots a young Indian boy, studies of some Yanomami blames his gun, and reacts by being communities, how does he support ‘badly rattled’ – he isn’t referring to such a weighty pronouncement 9 the child! about humankind’s history? His book won’t lead many to Let’s start by going back to 1968, empathize with the Indians’ when Chagnon claimed humanity, or with Chagnon’s: unequivocally (in his first book) that neither are much in evidence. All this the Yanomami practiced female is relevant because Chagnon has infanticide,11 and so had to fight for long cast himself as the lead actor in women because there just weren’t his fieldwork, supposedly unfairly enough to go around. He provided maligned, misunderstood, no evidence for it, which isn’t unwanted. In his latest book, the surprising, because it wasn’t true: reader learns much about the like most societies, the Yanomami anthropologist’s endless problems, do, very occasionally, kill babies,12 but less about the Indians – apart but they don’t especially single out from just how nasty many of them girls. Although Chagnon repeated his are. claim about female infanticide in the second edition of Yanomamö (1977), he dropped it completely six years 2 later.13 Students relying on Chagnon count: many children and teenage up to 1983 would wrongly believe girls are missing. He decides it’s the Yanomami practiced female ‘most likely’ they’d been captured, infanticide. Those studying the same and ‘presumably’ the girls had book in later editions wouldn’t become ‘extra mates for their encounter ‘female infanticide’ at captors’. He doesn’t explain why he all.14 labors such qualifiers – ‘appear to’, ‘most likely’, ‘presumably’ – when his His more generalized claim thesis hinges on this being the nowadays is also slippery – preponderant case throughout sometimes it’s a probability; other history. Indeed, it’s the only reason times it’s more definite – but it he mentions it at all in his chapter seems to be twofold. The first part is entitled, ‘Conflicts over Women’. supposed to be unarguable: ‘the archeological record reveals He then, curiously, recites three abundant evidence that fighting and confessions: ‘we don’t Know directly warfare were common prior to the how common fighting over women… origin of the political state and, in was in the past’ (his emphasis); sites much of the Americas, prior to the like Crow Creek are ‘rare’ (in fact, it’s coming of Europeans.’ As far as unique);16 and ‘ethnographic ‘fighting’ is concerned, so far, so accounts are often silent about fights good: ‘common’ is vague enough, so over women even if they taKe place it’s impossible to argue with that, while the anthropologist is there.’ His even though ‘the archeological omniscience about what other record’ cannot possibly reveal its anthropologists conceal is, to say the frequency. least, surprising, or perhaps he simply means, ‘most don’t mention Whether or not there was ‘warfare’ fights, but don’t let that spoil the as such, is another question. Some theory.’ think that didn’t start until after the invention of the state, but that hangs Moving on from what he claims is on what you mean by ‘war’.15 In any direct evidence, he turns to indirect event, everyone knows that fighting accounts about fighting over women, and war were certainly extremely and advances just two examples: common after the Europeans turned writings of Spanish conquistadors; up. and convict William Buckley, who escaped to the Australian interior in Chagnon then goes on to his 1803, and subsequently recounted evolutionary key, ‘Females appear to his stories about the Aboriginals. have been prized booty in those cases The resulting 1852 book (also cited where large numbers of sKeletons – by Pinker)17 was an effort to make victims of massacres – have been some money at the end of Buckley’s found together.’ In a nutshell, the life. It includes claims which are killer gets the girl. clearly fabricated, or at least 18 He gives just one example: Crow mistaken. Creek in the Great Plains, where That’s not very convincing, so let’s nearly five hundred such victims return briefly to the ‘direct’ were buried in about 1325. Chagnon evidence, the apparent absence of says there are gaps in the body dead children and teenage girls at 3 Crow Creek. Firstly, it’s by no means According to Chagnon, killers have certain: both age and gender are more women, and more children – difficult to determine from the and grandchildren, and so on – than remains, as archaeologists have non-killers, and so have a genetic stressed. Secondly, if there is any advantage. Genetic selection favors imbalance it might have been killers because (at least, Yanomami) reflected in the living population as society rewards them with enhanced well: they were not in great shape, prestige. That’s supposedly where perhaps resulting from a lack of food we all came from.