The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?

  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