The Yanomamö Culture

The Yąnomamö Culture

The Yąnomamö are one of the last cultures to come in contact with the modern world. Living in almost complete seclusion in the Amazon rain forests of South America, the Yąnomamö reside in round communal huts, also known as "shabanos". Much of the daily lives of the Yąnomamö consist of gardening, hunting, gathering, making crafts and visiting with each other. The Yąnomamö think very highly of the men in the tribe, making gender relations something interesting to talk about, as well as their beliefs and values, and their sicknesses and how they heal their people.

Although the children of both genders devote much more of their time with their mothers, the boys are taught multiple sex-specific roles and attitudes by their fathers and are encouraged to learn 'masculine' things by observing them. Based on research conducted by Napoleon Chagnon, "A girls' childhood ends sooner than a boy's. By the time a girl is 10 years old or so, she has become an economic asset to the mother and spends a great deal of time working" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 127, para. 3). By the time the little girls are teenagers, they have been married with a child or two.

As Napoleon Chagnon states, "The social dynamics within villages are involved with giving and receiving marriageable girls. Marriages are arranged by older kin, usually men, who are brothers, uncles, and the father" (Chagnon, p. 7, para. 4). Brian Schwimmer, from the University of Manitoba, wrote that, "The Yąnomamö follow a bilateral cross-cousin marriage system whereby marriage partners are doubly related to one another as matrilineal and patrilineal cross-cousins as a consequence of similar marriages among their parents" (Schwimmer, 2003). Chagnon (1992) writes, "The general Yąnomamö rule about marriage, insofar as it can be phrased in terms of a decent rule, is simply that everyone must marry outside of his or her own patrilineal group" (p. 140, para. 3).

In Chagnon's book, "The Yąnomamö consider it very inappropriate to be familiar with the mother of the woman you may marry or have married. Indeed, they describe it as 'yawaremou', or incest" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 139, para. 1). This also means that the men should not make eye contact, say their names, go near them, touch them, or speak to the mothers-in-laws. "The most flagrant cases of incest I have in my records - men marrying parallel cousins or, in one case, a half-sister - are cases of men who are not only headmen but headmen with reputations of 'ferocity'" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 158, para. 3).

The Yąnomamö have very strong beliefs and values when it comes to gaining wisdom through cannibalism. After reading Chagnon's findings,

"Most document cases of cannibalism, except in extreme circumstances, are highly ritualistic and occur for religious or mystical reasons, although some of the advocates of the 'protein theory' have since the early 1970's attempted to argue that the widespread consumption of humans by some peoples, such as the Aztecs, was a response to acute protein shortage" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 114, para. 3).

One instance, two warriors are going hand-to-hand in a contest, and one warrior overcomes the other. To celebrate the victory, he rips his enemy's heart out and ritually consumes a portion of it to both honor his enemy and possibly gain some of the enemy's gallantry to add to his own (Chagnon, 1992, p. 114, para. 3).

"Among the Yąnomamö, only men become shamans, they are also called shabori or hekura, the latter word being used also for the myriad tiny, humanoid spirits they manipulate" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 116, para. 2). A Yąnomamö man does not just wake up one day and decide, "Hmmm, I want to be a shaman"...instead he has to train for this life changing decision. "Training includes a long period of fasting, a year or more, during which the trainee loses and vast amount of weight" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 117, para. 1). "The shamans have to take hallucinogenic snuff - ebene - to contact the spirits, or hekuras, but adept shamans with great experience need very little. Just a pinch is enough to get them going, get them singing the soft, melodic, and beautiful songs that attract the spirits. The hekura require beauty, and most shamans decorate their chests and stomachs with nara pigment, don their best feathers, and make themselves beautiful before calling the spirits" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 117, para. 3).

Not all of the Yąnomamö's lethal fighting can be considered as war, although the values associated with war - bellicosity, ferocity, and violence - undoubtedly increase the amount of all kinds of fighting (Chagnon, 1992, p. 185, para. 3). As Chagnon writes, "Indeed, some of the other forms of fighting, such as the formal chest-pounding duel, may even be considered as the antithesis of war, for they provide an alternative to killing" (Chagnon, 1992, p. 185, para. 4). The most harmless form of fighting is the chest-pounding duel. If