A second source of knowledge about traditional societies seeks to peel back some recent changes in modern traditional societies, by interviewing living non-literate people about their orally transmitted histories, and by reconstructing in that way their history over several generations. Naturally, this method poses its own problems, and its practitioners have gained much experience of techniques (pioneered especially by Jan Vansina) to cross-check and ensure the reliability of the information elicited.
For example, the American anthropologist Polly Wiessner and the Enga artist Akii Tumu collaborated to study the oral history of the Enga people, the largest language group in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. While written history began for the Enga only with the arrival of literate Europeans in the 1930s, the Enga are exceptional among New Guineans in keeping track of historical events through a body of historical traditions (termed atone pii) that they recognize as distinct from myths (termed tindi pii), and that go back 8 to 10 generations (250 to 400 years). Between 1985 and 1998 Wiessner and Tumu interviewed elders in 110 Enga tribes. They tested the correctness of the interview responses by looking for consistency between accounts given by different clans, and by different tribes; by examining whether accounts of wars and migrations given by descendants of participants on opposite sides of the war or migration, and given by neighboring groups, agreed; and by checking whether information offered about one sphere of life (e.g., ceremonial pig exchanges) corresponded to information offered about different spheres of life (e.g., land use and agricultural production). They also checked the oral accounts against two independently datable events that affected all Highland groups of Papua New Guinea, including the Enga: a massive volcanic eruption of nearby Long Island in the 17th century, which deposited a layer of chemically identifiable ash (tephra) all over the Eastern Highlands, and about which the Enga and other Highlanders have an oral tradition of a “time of darkness,” when ash darkened the sun for several days; and the arrival of the sweet potato, which transformed Highlands agriculture and societies between 250 and 400 years ago. By these cross-checking and cross-dating methods, Wiessner and Tumu were able to reconstruct detailed histories of tribe dispersals, population growth, population size, environmental conditions, agricultural subsistence, crops cultivated, trade, leadership, social organization, wars, migrations, and the development of ceremonies and cults over the last eight Enga generations, long before European arrival in the New Guinea Highlands.
This method of oral reconstruction is applicable to only some traditional peoples, perhaps just a minority of them, because many or most peoples do not retain detailed oral knowledge going back more than a few generations. That depends on factors such as their social organization, their degree of insistence on first-hand experience, who tells stories, the context of telling stories, and the degree of participation by listeners in story-telling. For example, the missionary linguist Daniel Everett found that Brazil’s Piraha Indians refused to discuss anything that they had not seen with their own eyes, and hence were scornful of Everett’s efforts to tell them about the life of Jesus: “Did you see him yourself? If not, how can you believe it?” Similarly, the many studies carried out among !Kung people from the 1960s onwards have failed to recover detailed information concerning events or conditions of !Kung life more than a few generations ago. On the other hand, among the Enga, historical stories are recounted in the men’s house, listeners comment on and correct mistakes in the stories, and powerful individuals are not permitted to distort history in order to advance their own interests.
A third approach to learning about traditional societies shares the goals of oral reconstruction, insofar as it seeks to view the societies before they were visited by modern scientists. While scientists have been among the first outsiders to contact some traditional peoples—such as the “discovery” of the Baliem Valley Dani by the Third Archbold Expedition from the American Museum of Natural History in 1938—more often scientists have been preceded by government patrols, traders, missionary linguists, or explorers. That was obviously true for the vast majority of traditional societies of the New World, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific islands, because they were “discovered” by Europeans from AD 1492 until the early 20th century, before modern anthropology had coalesced as a discipline doing fieldwork. Even the recent first contacts of New Guinea and Amazonian tribes from the 1930s until today have usually not been made by scientists, because of the resources required and the dangers involved. By the time scientists arrive, the tribal culture has already begun to change as a result of contacts.
But we may still learn a lot from the anecdotal descriptions left by those first scientifically untrained visitors. The obvious disadvantage is that their accounts are less systematic, less quantitative, and less informed by rigorous method and the existing body of knowledge about other tribes. A compensating obvious advantage is that the resulting information refers to a tribal society less modified than when encountered later by scientists. A less obvious advantage is that the unsystematic and unscientific nature of those first observations can actually be a strength. Untrained visitors often describe broadly whatever strikes them, and thereby may discuss facets of a society that would be ignored by a scientist sent out with research support to study some particular phenomenon.
An example is a remarkable book (Dschungelkind) about Indonesian New Guinea’s Fayu people, written by a German woman called Sabine Kuegler. During my first visit to Indonesian New Guinea in 1979, my helicopter pilot told me of a terrifying visit that he had recently made to a just-discovered group of Fayu nomads on behalf of a missionary couple, Klaus and Doris Kuegler. At the invitation of the Fayu, the Kueglers then brought their three young children to live among the Fayu and were the first outsiders that most Fayu saw. The Kueglers’ middle daughter, Sabine, thus grew up among the Fayu from ages 7 to 17, at a time when there were still no outsiders there other than the Kuegler family. On moving to Europe to pursue a European education and to become a European, Sabine published in 2005 a book about her experiences and observations.
Sabine’s book lacks data tables, tests of rival hypotheses, and summaries of the current state of some subfield of anthropology. Instead, readers of her book will gain a vivid sense of Fayu life just after first contact, including arrows whizzing through the air, dangers, accidents, and deaths. Because Sabine’s playmates were Fayu children and she grew up partly as a Fayu herself, her book approximates an autobiography of a Fayu, but one endowed with a dual perspective as a Fayu and a Westerner. Sabine was thus able to notice Fayu characteristics—such as their sense of time, physical difficulties of Fayu life, and the psychology of being a Fayu—that a Fayu would take for granted and not bother to mention. Equally moving is Sabine’s account of returning to Europe, and of seeing European society through her partly Fayu eyes, which let her notice features of European life (e.g., issues of dealing with strangers, or the dangers of crossing a road) that a European would take for granted. Perhaps, some day, a scientist will visit the Fayu and will describe some aspect of their society. But, by then, the Fayu will be drastically different people from those encountered by the Kueglers in 1979. No scientist will be able to repeat Sabine’s experience, and to describe what it was like to grow up with and to think and feel as a nearly traditional Fayu.
The remaining method for learning about traditional societies, and the sole source of information about past societies without writing and not in contact with literate observers, is archaeology, whose advantages and disadvantages are the opposites of those associated with modern observers. By excavating and radiocarbon-dating a site, archaeologists can reconstruct a culture up to tens of thousands of years before it was contacted and changed by the modern world. Thus, concerns about perturbing effects of modern contact and of the resident sociologist disappear completely. That’s a huge advantage. The corresponding disadvantage is that fine detail, such as daily events and people’s names, motives, and words, is lost. Archaeologists also face the disadvantage of
more uncertainty and more required effort in extracting social conclusions from their physical manifestations preserved in archaeological deposits. For instance, archaeologists attempt to deduce individual inequality in social status and wealth indirectly from differences in the buried grave goods and sizes of tombs in cemeteries excavated laboriously over the course of several field seasons. A modern ethnographer might observe such inequalities directly in one day of fieldwork—but the results would apply to a society changed to an uncertain degree by modern contact.
Thus, our four methods for understanding traditional societies differ in their strengths and weaknesses. We can have increased confidence in conclusions if all four methods can be applied and yield similar results. For example, we have information about tribal wars from modern scientific observations (e.g., Jan Broekhuijse and Karl Heider’s detailed accounts of Dani warfare described in Chapter 3), from oral reconstructions (such as those by Polly Wiessner and Akii Tumu), from anecdotal accounts (such as Sabine Kuegler’s among the Fayu), and from archaeological evidence (such as excavated battle armor and skulls split by axes). When these four approaches disagree in their conclusions, we have to figure out why: perhaps the society changed with time or under contact.
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
Note: Plate numbers refer to insert illustrations. Plates 1–28 appear between pages 148 and 149; plates 29–47 appear between pages 308 and 309.
Aboriginal Australians, 14, 26fig., 156, 228, plate 2
elders, 214, 230
food scarcity and storage, 309table, 315
health, 432–33, 439table, 446
information sources, 477–78
languages, 380, 381, 384–85, 397–98, 406
See also specific peoples
accidents, 30, 245, 278–83, 279table
avoidance and vigilance, 283–86
causes, 278–83, 279table
See also dangers; risk
Ache Indians, 14, 27fig., 51, 292, 456, plate 10
children, 178, 199, 286
elders, 212, 214, 215, 216
environmental hazards, 278, 279table, 280, 281, 285–86
food scarcity, 301
violence, 286, 290
advertising, age and, 226, plates 23, 24
affluence, 116–17
disease and, 412–13, 430, 432, 433, 436, 439table, 440
religion and, 354, 368
Africa and African peoples
diabetes, 433, 438table, 450
language diversity, 371, 398
map, 26fig.
warfare, 144, 151–52
See also specific groups
age cohorts
among children, 201
ratio of elderly to youth, 231–32
aggregation and dispersal, 291, 310, 315–16
agriculture. See farming
Agta people, 26fig., 177, 279table, 292, plate 3
trade, 66, 70, 72, 75
Ainu people, 15, 26fig., 42, 44
food storage, 309table, 310, 311
Aka Pygmies, 26fig., 55, plates 8, 20
child autonomy, 197, 199
child care, 187, 188, 193, plate 8
child punishment, 194, 195
environmental hazards, 278, 279table
weaning, 181
Alaska North Slope Inuit, 27fig., 68table, 71
Alaskan languages, 397, 398, 408, plate 47
Albertson, Mike, 113
Albigensian Manichaeans, 363, 364
alliances, 74–75, 90–91, 116, 291–92
treachery, 137–38, 290–91
warfare and, 120, 141–42, 143
allo-parenting, 187–90, 208
Alzheimer’s disease, 392–95
Amazonia, 18, 199, 385–86
See also specific peoples
ambushes, 120, 122, 137, 141, 144
American Civil War, 145
American Museum of Natural History, 57
American peoples, map, 27fig.
See also specific regions, countries, and peoples
Anasazi Indian sites, 135–36
Andaman Islanders, 15, 26fig., 55, 139, 444table, plate 4
children, 189, 194
trade, 65, 67, 68table
Andean peoples
field scattering, 304–6, 338–39
food storage, 309table, 311
language diversity and loss, 380, 401
Anderson, Robin, First Contact, 57, 58
animal domestication, 19, 295
See also herding societies; livestock
animals
animal cognition, 337, 351
dangerous animals, 199, 200, 271, 279table, 280, 282–83, 285, 286, plate 43
infectious diseases and, 295, 297
rearing of animal young, 183, 186
thrifty-gene experiments, 446–47
warlike animals, 154–57
See also livestock; specific animals
animism, 338
Apache Indians, 144, 166
Arab countries, diabetes in, 433, 438table, 450
Arabic language, 372, 401
Aranda Aborigines, 228
Araucanian Indians, 144, 228
archaeological evidence, 481
for trade, 60, 64
for warfare, 134–36, 150, 152
Archbold expedition, 57, 119
Archbold, Richard, 57
Arctic and Arctic peoples, 14, 214, 311, 381
maps, 26fig., 27fig.
See also specific groups
arrow poisons, 281
art, 136, 340, plate 25
Asia and Asian peoples
diabetes, 430, 433, 438–39table, 440
filial piety, 221
food storage, 309table, 313
language diversity, 376, 380
map, 26fig.
salt intake, 419, 420, 421, 426–27
See also specific countries and peoples
Asmat people, 158
atheism, 325, 330, 354–55
Atkins, J. D. C., 399
Atran, Scott, 327table, 344
Australia
diabetes in, 438table
See also Aboriginal Australia
Austronesian expansion, 380, 381, 396
autonomy. See independence
Auyana people, 148–49
Azande people, 341table
Aztec Empire, 140
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 449, plate 28
Baliem Valley, 57
Harvard expedition, 119–20, 122, 132, 153
See also Dani people
Baltic languages, 399
bands, 14–15, 18
Bantu languages, 380, 381, 396
Bantu peoples, 51, 66, 70, 72, 187, 188
Bellah, Robert, 327table
Bengali language, 372
Berndt, Catherine, 94
Berndt, Ronald, 94, 272
bilingualism, 382, 386–92, 400, 402–3
See also multilingualism
Bird-David, Nurit, 205
birds, 186
Bismarck, Otto von, 193
black mamba, 283–84
blood pressure, 417–18
See also hypertension
Bofi Pygmies, 181
Bonampak murals, 136
bonobos, 154
Borodkin, Sophie, 397, plate 47
Bougainville Island, 395–96
boundaries. See territoriality
Bowles, Samuel, 139
Boyer, Pascal, 344
breast-feeding, 175, 179–83, 208
Breton language, 399, 465
Britain
child-rearing, 191, 193
salt intake, 427
sugar intake, 428–29
in the World Wars, 127, 407
Broekhuijse, Jan, 54, 120, 133
Bud
dhism, 328, 329, 330, 352
bureaucracies, 11, 15
Butler, Samuel, 193
California Indians, 309table, 381
See also specific groups
Calusa Indians, 16, 17, 27fig., 68table, 146
Canada
French language in, 375, 403, 404, 409
native languages, 376, 377, 381
cannibalism, 159, 246
cassowary, 249, 269
The Castle (Kafka), 11–12
Catholicism, 341table, 363, 364
causal explanations
disease responses and, 296, 297–98, 339
human cognition and, 336–40
religion and, 329, 340, 345–46, 367fig.
cave paintings, 340, plate 25
Celtic languages, 396, 399, 401, 408
Chagnon, Napoleon, 132, 158, 163
Cherokee Indians, 406
chiefdoms, 16–17, 201
dispute resolution, 95–97, 115
religion, 356–57, 368
warfare, 141, 146, 147, 148
See also specific peoples
Child of the Jungle (Kuegler), 133, 480–81
children, 24, 30, 173–209, 213
adoptions, 189
autonomy of, 173–74, 188–89, 192, 196–200, 205, 208–9, 459–60
breast-feeding and birth intervals, 177–78, 179–83, 208
child development scholarship, 174–76
child-rearing practices compared, 206–9
childbirth, 176–77, 187–88
discipline and punishment, 192–96, 208
elders and, 187, 188, 218, 236–37
empty-nest syndrome, 233
fathers and allo-parents, 178, 186–90, 208
infant-adult physical contact, 181–82, 183–86, 199, 208
infant and child mortality, 176–77, 179, 180, 218, 231, 290
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies? Page 59