[Wutang]

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/06/10...ale-honor/

"If Chagnon was surprised to find that the Yanomamö were not the peace-loving noble savages he had expected, he was equally surprised to learn the cause of their constant conflict.

Chagnon’s education in anthropology had stressed that primitive peoples only went to war over material resources – land, food, oil, water, wealth, etc. – just like industrialized nations did. What Chagnon discovered in the field was the Yanomamö did indeed fight over a scarce resource, but it was one his contemporaries completely dismissed: women.

Chagnon argues that the Yanomamö were driven by a biological desire to pass on their genes just as other animals were, and that their conflicts were almost entirely rooted in reproductive competition. “The tokens of wealth that we civilized people covet are largely irrelevant to success and survival in the tribal world and were irrelevant during most of human history,” Chagnon writes. “But women have always been the most valuable single resource that men fight for and defend.”

[Therapsid]

(06-13-2013 10:29 PM)Wutang Wrote:  

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/06/10...ale-honor/

"If Chagnon was surprised to find that the Yanomamö were not the peace-loving noble savages he had expected, he was equally surprised to learn the cause of their constant conflict.

Chagnon’s education in anthropology had stressed that primitive peoples only went to war over material resources – land, food, oil, water, wealth, etc. – just like industrialized nations did. What Chagnon discovered in the field was the Yanomamö did indeed fight over a scarce resource, but it was one his contemporaries completely dismissed: women.

Chagnon argues that the Yanomamö were driven by a biological desire to pass on their genes just as other animals were, and that their conflicts were almost entirely rooted in reproductive competition. “The tokens of wealth that we civilized people covet are largely irrelevant to success and survival in the tribal world and were irrelevant during most of human history,” Chagnon writes. “But women have always been the most valuable single resource that men fight for and defend.”

Napoleon Chagnon has been absolutely demonized by the bulk of the anthropological and social science community. In the book "Darkness in El Dorado" journalist Patrick Tierney practically accused him of genocide for supposedly spurring a measles epidemic among the Yanomamö. As it turns out, he was cleared of this charge by the leading anthropological body in America.

In the final analysis, the man's been treated like a pariah because he studied Amazonian tribal society without ideological blinkers. He came in with the typical preconceptions, but years of experience in the field schooled him otherwise. He learned that mankind behaves much like other animals in traditional societies, and that we have innate tendencies that transcend cultural context. This in itself makes him anathema to most academics in the social sciences.

But they also despise him for who he is. Chagnon is a throwback. Starting in the 1960's he spent decades in untamed wilderness studying tribal societies first hand. He's a modern day version of a colonial explorer from the 19th century, such as Henry Morton Stanley, the man who searched for David Livingstone.

The irony is that he's always shown respect for the Yanomamö and is far from a racist or cultural imperialist, or whatever it is he's been charged for. But he deals with mankind as it is, instead of as we would like it to be. And that's enough to make him worthy of hate.