Yanomamo (Amazon)

          

Environment:
    They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, with 9.6 million hectares their territory is twice the size of Switzerland. They live in a fairly rural setting of untouched forests, living in tiny movable villages. They are isolated for the most part except for the miners that are infringing on their territory. Their temperatures vary depending on the height but they vary from 40 degrees F to 70 degrees F with humidity being around 50-60% They tend to have two seasons, one between May and November being their rain season and December through April being their summer. Their area is filled with many animals that can be considered dangerous such as jaguars, anacondas and poison arrow frogs, however the Yanomamo often raise cattle, chickens and dogs. The plants that they find can be fruits often found in high trees, they grow tobacco as well as cotton.

Rain Forest Environment

Adaptations:                   
    Physical
        Their height is one physical adaptation, their often short muscular build helps then due to their general low intake of certain nutrients. It helps them last longer on less food since their food is often dependant upon hunting and gathering.   
        A second physical adaptation would be their hair and skin tone. They have less hair than most humans due to the high amounts of humidity they have to endure as well as slightly pigmented skin to help with the heat and sun during their summer season.

Skin Color/Less Hair

    Cultural
        A cultural adaptation is their tools, their hooks for their fishing and their bows and arrows for hunting game for meat since they do not eat their cows and chickens to help their food source.
        Another adaptation is their housing their shabonos which can be temporary living quarters if they need to move they can be easily rebuilt in a new location since their food is based upon where the soil is fertile since they depend upon gardening for most of their food.
        Gardening provides much of the food for living when there is little meat coming home.   
        

Tools used, arrows

Language:
    The Yanomami use the Xirianá a language that is distinctly their own. It is separated into at least 4 different sub groups Yanoma (Yanomam), Sanuma, Ninam, Yanam. The language has 8 vowels and 13 consants. There was no written language until recently but it is not used by at least 60 percent of the population since they like to keep their tradition of their oral language

Festivals

Gender Roles:
    There are two clearly specific gender roles, female and male. The females are the childbearers and wives, the males are the hunters and providers. There is a definite division of the roles based upon biology, males do their roles and the females do theirs with no crossing over since there are often less females their main role is childbearing. Their culture provides next to no opportunity for the women to do the man’s role and vice versa. They learn their roles from their parents, the daughters are taught by the mother and the sons learn from their mom and eventually their father once they are old enough to be strong enough to deal with the tasks they are given. I don’t believe an intersexed individual would be accepted into the society since they already have a lower view on females and they do “abort” some children after they are born if they are female or deformed for different reasons.

Males hunt

Females tend to the needs at home

                   
Subsistence:
    They are hunter gatherers primarily but they also plant food for their own use. They hunt and fish for meat and they scavenge what they can to make up for any missing foods found in their garden.  They hunt for game such as peccary, tapir, deer and monkey, and often use curare (a plant extract) to poison their prey and also extract poison from frogs.  Their food planted in the garden such as bananas and yams. Males do all the hunting and the females and children tend the gardens and do the scavenging for wild foods such as honey and larvae. Their gardens grow food year round. They can lack nutrition is some areas depending on their intake of meat but in general their health is modified since their bodies only require certain amounts of nutrients due to their smaller size.

Females cooking

Economic systems:
    The Yanomamo people do not produce a surplus of food since they only grow what needs to be eaten. If they do they may use it as gifts to nearby friendly villages to help keep their ties since there are a lot of wars among the Yanomamo people. It did not appear that they specialize in any kind of labor since they only use their time to keep the population up and feed their people and protect their people. They share their wealth of food and goods among their village, no hunter eats his own meat, and the gardens are communal. There is no real currency since they just trade in items if they do any trading with other villages which is rare.
                                

Very rarely trading

           
Marriage:
    Marriage is often monogamous due to the often low number of females in the village, which is why they do practice cousin marriage polygamous relationships do occur while often more rare. However there is an incest taboo against relations between siblings and direct family members. Females are often promised to a man at a very early age and are then given to the male once they have had their first menstrual cycle. Economic exchange is often not practiced, if they are already kin it is usually not required there are some instances where it does occur with gifts but is very rare. Males are valued over females, males play the dominating role and the females have very little choice in the matter. Homosexuality is not frowned upon and can happen among the male population, not the female population. The population live in a shabono which is a communal round like structure where each family is responsible for building their portion of the roof.

Inside a shabono

Kinship:
    Descent patterns often follow a patrilineal descent but the matrilineal lines are not ignored, kinships is very important to the Yanomami as kin are very important for their wars. However the maternal lines can be avoided but the paternal lines that come with the maternal lines are very important. There is no inheritance since they don’t take anything from a dead person. And males possess the authority in the family, and can abuse their wives to keep them in order but if a female is abused too far the female’s brother can step in and remove her from the relationship. In the culture the naming is very similar to the Iroquois. Fathers share names with their brothers, mothers with their sisters, siblings with their cousins.          
            

Kin standing together preparing for battle

Social Organization:
    Their culture is more of a stratified culture, where males have a natural higher status than females. The amount of children, wives, and how well of a warrior a male is that determines their social status. There is really no way for a female to change their status they are naturally lower than males, but males can change their status through their actions. Status in not necessarily inherited unless they are from kin of very highly respected family. However they do have beliefs of equality in sharing of food and housing with the whole village.
    


Political Structure       
    Political power is held by the males, there is often headman and if a village is larger they may have more than one. Power is determined by how the male handles situation and their social status as in how well they perform in war and their prestige as warriors and hunters. Headmen can either solve problems through oral tactics or through bullying tactics it varies between different villages. There are very few laws but punishments are often dealt between the two in conflict through duals or revenge killings and raids of other villages with kin against another lineage family.
                

Men gain power through their worth

The Role of Violence           

Two kinds of violence that arises are quarrels inside a village and wars between villages. When quarrels arise inside a village often end in duals that tend to end in draws to keep both sides dignity. Wars between villages are often over women and can lead to revenge killing or raids where kin is important and they band together to go and get revenge killing males and often taking females to marry to their family and used to reproduce.         

Ax fight

               

Religion:
    They are considered zooists or spirtualists where their beliefs are put into the spirit, they don’t believe in sins they simply believe that when one dies their spirit goes to the village of the ancestors where life is much easier, without disease or hunger. I found contradicting information of whether they believe in a deity or not as well as many varying different origin stories most likely due to the fact that their culture is separated into at least 250 villages and that they don’t really have a written language to keep their stories. But they do believe in four planes the upper-most layer is empty but used to contain ancestors, the second layer contains spirits of the dead, third layer earth and the fourth layer contains spirits in the underworld that cause harm to the living. Their religion as involves their connection to the environment and the animals. However they do have Shamans that are very important to the society. Shamans control illness and can cause it or cure it using medicines that they have control over, they also have control over demons, so in a way Shamans can influence the Yanomami’s actions. The religion is very important to them.
                    

 

Shaman at work

Art:

They do use body art to express different situations they are going through like if they are mourning a woman must have black face paint on, and men wear black paint when they are going to war. They use singing and dance at festivals such as at births and deaths, their music is more tonal and chats than it is singing like we know it. They also weave baskets and clothing with simple patterns. Myth telling is very important to them, it is all orally told.

        

Face paint and thin bamboo shoots as for body art

Culture Change:        

It has in some way been affected by western civilization in the fact that now have a written language, and some of the younger now literate members disagree with their elders on religion.       

I think some of the culture is still healthy and thriving in that some of the culture still has not been seen or contacted by western civilization, that part may keep its culture but the parts touched by western culture have lost some of their aggressiveness and traditions.

    I think culturally they have a weak role, their culture is not affecting anyone elses and they are continually losing their roots.

Miners infringing upon Yanomamo land

Sources:

Amazon Rain Forest 2006, 1 July <http://www.unique-southamerica-travel-experience.com/amazon-rainforest-animals.html>


Appendix 1 -Yanomami languages in Brazil 2007 26 July <http://www.proyanomami.org.br/homoxi/ap_1.htm>


Oclusivon and Attrition of the Primitive Yanomami Indians of Brazil 1975 Dental Clinics of North America 29 July <http://www.cleber.com.br/evan.html>


Survival for Tribal People 11 July <http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/yanomami>


Tales of the Yanomami 1985 Jacques Lizot 29 July <http://texts.00.gs/Tales_of_the_Yanomami.htm>


Venezuela 2003 <http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/geography/Slovenia-to-Zimbabwe-Cumulative-Index/Venezuela.html>


Yanomamo 24 July <http://www.everyculture.com/South-America/Yanomam.html>


The Yanomami Giovanni Saffirio June 29th <http://yanomamicatrimani.org/index.php/yanomami>


Yanomami, Orinoco 1 July <http://www.orinoco.org/apg/lopeopleindiv.asp?lang=en&people=yanomami>


Yanomami Indians: The Fierce People? 2008, Charito Ushiñahua 15 July <http://www.amazon-indians.org/yanomami.html>

Yanomami Village 27 June <http://www.wausau.k12.wi.us/east/Student%20Files/Anthropology/Template%202/social.html>

Art

                                        
           
1. Functions of Early Art: In this assignment folder is a link to a walk-through of the Lascaux Caves in France. Access the link and explore the cave paintings. There is also a link to background information on the cave site and I encourage you to review this as well. Then answer the following questions (25 points):
           

1. What were the cave artists trying to say?   

   
I believe that the cave artists were simply trying to tell stories and explain what they were seeing. Since they had close to no form of written language they had to rely on art to write their stories down.

2. Why do you think that there were so many animals and not as many people in the paintings?                   

I think that cave painters probably spent more time hunting and observing animals then they spent time with other people, their lives were more revolved around animals than other people. Most of their stories have to do with the hunt and less about their humanistic relationships, they really spent more time with nature.

3. What can the paintings tell us about other aspects of the life of cave dwellers or        Paleolithic people?

They tell us about how much they spend with animals, and how much more connected they are to the environment than most of us are.

4. What difficulties did these early humans navigate in order to paint these pictures?

The early humans had to deal with figuring out how to make “paint” they also had to paint in the day since during the night the caves would become dark unless they had fire. They also couldn’t really screw up since they don’t have the kinds of paint covers and erasers that we do.

5. Speculate as to three (3) possible functions of this art to early humans.       

Possible functions of art for them could be storytelling: it would be a way to “write” their stories down. It could be a way of communication if two different cultures met and they didn’t speak the same language they would both know what a bull looked like. Also it could be a way for them to mark their territory and or leave marks as to where they have hunted and where animals are plentiful or where they are not.
           
2. Commonalities in Function: Compare the possible functions of the art from the Lascaux Caves to modern art, in all of its various forms. What are some commonalities in function you can find in how the art of early humans and modern humans? (10 pts)

Art is a bit of a language that can be hard to understand, back then it used to be very literal, a fox was a fox, but now something simple can mean something much, much more. And much like back then it can be used to write stories, however we don’t so much use art to mark territories unless you consider tagging to be a form of art which it can be to some. Most functions of art back then can still be used now.
           
3. Introduce Us to Your Favorite Art: Include in your post at least one image and/or a link (5 pts) to a video depicting an art form you would like to explore. This could be a specific type of art (i.e., ceramics, photography, etc.), music (classical, blues, grunge, etc.), performance art, or any other type of art you might want to present. Then answer the following questions:
           
Drawing/Illustrating (these are two of my own pieces of art)

1. For those who practice this form of artistic expression, what function does it serve? What are they trying to communicate? (5 pts)       

Drawing/Illustrating can be a very expressive form of art, it can just simply tell a story or it can just show life as how it is. They can communicate so many different things it all depends on the person painting the picture or sketching out the image. These artists can also become advertisers/graphic designers where their job is to make a product look good to consumers.

2. Is there a complete culture surrounding this art form, i.e., a language, a set of behaviors, form of dress, etc.? Describe and identify the features of this culture. (10 pts)   

I think for each individual artist there is a specific “language” they use for their own art, two artists may share the same ideals and draw them but they might not draw it the same way. Most artists tend to look at things from a connective perspective constantly bringing two ideas together that most people wouldn’t associate with each other but it works.

3. How does this art form (and its culture) benefit society? Are there any detrimental affects? (5 pts)

This art form allows for creativity and it allows for people who don’t speak the same language to enjoy the same story. Stories can be told through images drawn by illustrators, much like animated movies, those used to be drawn by animators through cell blocks, it was hard work but it brought a lot of joy to many people. I can’t really think of any downsides to art other than maybe people will disagree with some artists are trying to convey through their work.

Culture and Violence

                   

1. Rules or laws against killing are essentially a cultural universal, meaning all cultures have rules regarding the killing other people and the punishments for breaking these rules. How do the Yanomamo rules regarding killing and the consequences for breaking these rules differ from the rules in Western cultures in general? (5 pts)       

    While the Yanomamo people try to keep civility they often break their rules if they feel their women are threatened, infidelity has occurred, or a family member was killed by another tribe.  It is more for revenge, compared to our culture when killing is frowned upon unless it is in defense or completely accidental, even then we don’t like killing. While our western culture leaves it to the police to deal with the incident, in the Yanomamo culture they deal will killings through revenge.
       

2. Describe the process of revenge killings as it is expressed in Yanomamo populations. (5 pts)       

Revenge killing is when a person is wrongfully killed so the kin of that family will take revenge on the kin of the person who killed. Often in raids the killings occur.

3. Revenge killings are a dangerous for those who take part. What are the benefits of obtaining the status of unokais? How do they compare to the benefits of being a non-unokais? Why would a man choose to become an unokais instead of being a non-unokais? (10 pts)           

The danger of revenge killing for anyone that takes part is when they do the killing they risk having a revenge killing place upon their own family or themselves.  The benefit to being a unokais is the prestige of having killed someone, they are often respected however if a man is a non-unokais they do not have to worry about the consequences of a revenge killing. A man would want to be a unokais because they are more respected than unokais and they tend to have more children and more wives. The prestige is worth the risk to them.

4. Identify and describe the relationship between revenge killings and these aspects of the    Yanomamo culture. How do they influence and affect each other?
1. Political structure (5 pts) - while the Yanomamo culture does have rule sort of against killing it still happens, so the revenge killings are almost above the “government”
2. Social Status/Social Organization (5 pts) - unokais tend to have a higher social status and are looked up to.       
3. Kinship (5 pts)    - Kinship groups stick together for revenge killing and kinship groups are targeted, it is not just the unokais they target.
4. Marriage & Reproduction (5 pts) - the men that perform revenge killing on average tended to have more children and wives than non-unokais

5. Behaviors that are usually labeled as “anti-social”, such as killing other people, are generally thought to be a bad thing to do under most circumstances, other than defense. Why do we need laws against something that no one should want to do? Use your reading of the article to help you explain your answer. (10 pts)           

   
I believe we have laws against killing so that we don’t turn into the Yanomamo tribe, eventually killing could become a sport and people would take honor in saying they have killed someone, but if we prevent it through laws this won’t happen. We are prevent revenge killing. While most of us find it only acceptable for defense if there were not laws stopping us from killing someone we could, even if we found it morally wrong we would be able to get revenge

Kinship

      I interviewed my mother Kathy Bullock, she was born in South Dakota and then moved to Granada Hills, CA when she was a baby. She has lived in California since. She lived with her parents and brother who she did not get along well with. At 18 she moved out and married her first husband. She has had a total of 4 kids, three boys one girl. Married 3 times. Her rough relationship with her father and the bad relationship between her parents is what she determines was her inability to understand love.

     We just sort of chatted for a bit, it was really easy to get the information but it was odd asking her questions like “so who are your kids” when I obviously knew the answer. But we both laughed it off and would continue on as normal. I think it affected the thoroughness since I probably did not ask as much questions as I should have since I already knew most of the answers since we’ve discussed our family before. I think interviewing someone unrelated would be easier for me since I would not feel quite so silly since I wouldn’t be asking questions about myself and people I know all about.
           
    Some of the things I noticed is that the matrilineal descent tended not to move far, all my siblings and grandparents live in Southern California. However on my patrilineal descent they tended to spread out more. There is more of a trend to smaller families as the generations progress, however there used to be larger families more toward the earlier generations mapped. Ideal differences have put a barrier between my family and my mother’s ex families and her brother and her deceased father.

   

    I know both sides of my family pretty well, my family is fairly small but I know most of my relatives, once we start getting to older generations I know less.
    It all depends I socialize more with my mom’s mom more than I do my dad’s dad, if that makes sense. I also socialize more with my brothers which technically would be considered my mom’s side since they are not related to my father. My aunts and uncles on my dad’s side are more spread out so I don’t see them quite as often.

I think it would have to be my mom,    mostly because she handles the money more often, even though she makes less than my father she does the majority of the spending for the family so often she is the decision maker.   

    Family members who marry into the family are treated the same as members who are apart of the family. We are such a small family that we all get along well and it’s not hard to become apart of our general crazy quirks. 

   I don’t really feel there are any different attitudes based upon gender in our family, I’m the only daughter in the family and I’m not treated any different by my brothers or family. I think we mostly view each other at equals though our family relationship is different than most since my oldest brother is twenty years older than me.

As odd as it may sound I don’t really feel like this exercise I learned much more than I already knew. But looking at it from an anthropological standpoint was interesting, it made me view how my family interacts with each other but for the most part I knew all these thing internally but now I was just viewing them from an external standpoint.

           

Agriculture and Trade

Part 1
    The benefits to hunter gatherers are they are very active, so they are more in shape. They rely on skill, and have the knowledge to which plants they can eat and which ones they can not. The benefit to agriculture is that they don’t have to travel to find food, they grow it all themselves as well as their cattle.
    The disadvantage to hunter gatherers is they have to constantly move in order to find their food, and if they don’t know what they can and cannot eat it can get them killed. Disadvantages to agriculture is that studies show they are not as healthy as hunter gatherers, and their mouths are smaller causing problems.
    Hunter gatherers provide a healthier diet, shown in Razib Khan’s model when agriculture started an increase in death occured. It seems that hunter gatherers all together have a healthier lifestyle they are constantly moving and their food changes giving them diet change providing them with the nutrients that they need
    Early human populations most likely started using agriculture so that they could settle down in one location. It would be more productive to have one place to call home and raise your food there rather than chasing after your food daily. Generally speaking humans seem to like schedules and regularity, so if they can control their environment to produce the food they need at specific times of the year then it would make more sense.

Part 2

The availability of surplus and the ability to trade go hand in hand. If you have 20 pigs and 50 yams but you need 15 pigs and 40 yams to eat it means you have a surplus of 5 pigs and 10 yams, and you can only trade what you don’t need. In essence you can only trade what you have left over, you can’t trade things that don’t exist.

    A benefit to trading is that you have the ability to get something you don’t have. As a farmer you can only grow so many things, so you then have the ability to trade with someone else to gain what you need. Another benefit it you gain the aspect of community, it allows you to interact with different people forming bonds over what you have and what you don’t, what you don’t need and what you need to get.
    A negative social aspect of trading is that people can get taken advantage of causing certain people to lose product. Trading can also be very competitive causing problems among traders of the same items especially if one of the people has an advantage over the other. Monopolies are also a problem, they can set their price at what ever they want if their item is wanted by others.
    Agriculture made it easier for trade to happen, with agriculture more food is available and it gives different people the opportunity to work together to get what they need. Trading probably happened because one farmer had too much of one product and a different farmer had too much of a different product so they traded to get rid of their surplus and gain something they need.

Language Blog

Part 1:

This was very difficult not to talk at all. I even had to catch myself a few times from making sound effects to try to display my thoughts. It almost became like a guessing game of charades if she asked a question with two answers I would have to try to indicate which answer was better though hand gestures.

The conversation became more them talking to me, than with me. They could get simple yes/no answers, a few eye rolls, and the occasional eyebrow raised but that was it. It became more just talking and not expecting an answer.                      

    The speaking culture had the advantage, say the speaking culture wants to go to war with a country they just say “lets go to war”, but for the non symbolic speaking culture it would be much more difficult to explain “lets go to war”. I feel as though the speaking culture would have an attitude of maybe superiority over the other since it is easier for them to communicate. Individuals that have difficulty with spoken language would be children, foreigners and handicapped individuals. The way people who can speak, who interact with them is they tend to slow down their words, often times it leads to frustration.
               
Part 2

I managed to almost last the whole time the part I had a problem with was moving my head and eyebrows. What made it so difficult was the inability to move and express with my body. I’m very much a person that conveys a lot of emotion in my face and my body gesture.

In the conversation it was very hard for them to judge what kind of attitude I had, since it was so emotionless it was hard for them to gauge my reactions to specific statements. I had to say a lot more since my face and hands were not saying it for me.   

Non-speech language is very important in our communication skills, it cuts down the time we need to speak. If I can raise an eyebrow inquisitively it conveys “why” without me having to say it.

    Yes there are people who have difficulty reading body language, they tend to be the people that takes things way too far from appropriate and make everyone uncomfortable. Like I said the advantage would be knowing people’s boundaries, and being able to have social skills. Situations where it would be useful for someone else to not be able to read my body language is when you are angry at someone but you don’t want to hurt them or their feelings. It’s a hard thing to think of a benefit to not reading body language because there are so few, it’s so important to know body language.                                                       
Part 3

Yes, it would have helped because then we could have had a real conversation as

opposed to really just me listening to a conversation and agreeing and disagreeing with comments. I would have been able to answer questions and feel a part of the conversation.
    It gives the culture the ability to keep records and stories. It also gives them the ability to communicate to others without having to speak or see each other. It also allows for the ability of signs, imagine how hard it would be to drive somewhere without all the road signs we have, I for one know I would get lost all the time.

Written language for one allowed for the spread of religions, without the ability to write and translate those words it would have been so much harder to spread the religion. Writing also spreads ideas of progressions and even technology. Written language plays a large role in globalization.