Noble Savages by Napoleon A. Chagnon

Author:Napoleon A. Chagnon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Unokais

Ages

n

Number

of

offspring

Average

number of

offspring

20-24

5

5

1.00

25-30

14

22

1.57

31-40

43

122

2.83

> 41

75

524

6.99

Total

137

673

4.91

Non-unokais

Ages

n

Number

of

offspring

Average

number of

offspring

20-24

78

14

0.18

25-30

58

50

0.86

31-40

61

123

2.02

> 41

46

193

4.19

Total

243

380

1.59

The more interesting finding has to do with the comparative reproductive success of unokais and non-unokais. It should be intuitively clear that if unokais are more successful at acquiring wives, they are likely to have more children as well. This chart provides this comparison:

The bottom row reveals that unokais have, on average, 4.91 children compared to same-age non-unokais, who average only 1.59 offspring each, that is, unokais have three times as many offspring as non-unokais.

These findings are almost unique in cultural anthropology reports, not so much because the Yanomamö are unique but because they managed to survive demographically intact long enough for a Darwinian field working cultural anthropologist to document this aspect of their lives. It should have been done—and could have been done—among other groups by anthropologists even a generation earlier than me.

There have been some thirty or more anthropologists who began fieldwork among the Yanomamö after I began. They all could have easily collected comparable data on unokais and variations in reproductive success similar to the data just described. Not one of them did this. Yet some of these anthropologists claim that I have “exaggerated” Yanomamö violence even though they have not produced their own data, if they even collected these data, on causes of death among the various groups they studied. They could have demonstrated their statistical findings on how much violence and violent causes of death took place while they were studying the Yanomamö in the areas they worked in. Unfortunately, this is not how cultural anthropology now operates. Those among my anthropological colleagues who openly and frequently criticize my findings without providing comparable data on the Yanomamö groups they studied only convince academics in adjacent disciplines that cultural anthropology is not only not scientific, but it is not capable of being scientific. The finger, instead, should be pointed at those who never collect relevant data but simultaneously condemn their colleagues whose hard-won data sometimes lead to conclusions they find uncomfortable.

Neither field biologists nor intelligent laymen find my results strange or unusual. But a small, highly vocal number of cultural anthropologists seem to be very upset by my data. One anthropologist, as mentioned earlier, even accused me of suggesting that the Yanomamö “had a gene for warfare.” In cultural anthropology, when you want to pour scorn on an adversary, you suggest that he is claiming that “genes” cause “culture” and he is therefore a “genetic determinist.” For good measure, you can call him a “biological reductionist” as well. One of my former professors cynically observed that anthropologists really don’t have colleagues—they just have co-conspirators.

My 1988 Science article led to a number of highly critical responses. Some ad hominem criticism of this article persists to this day. I will discuss the ramifications of this article later in this book.

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