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Try to imagine a world without numbers. No more addition or subtraction, algebra nor calculus. No more high school geometry. It would be pretty hard to get by without basic counting, such as being able to tell whether you had caught five fish or ten fish. Yet one tribe in Brazil seems to get by just fine with practically no comprehension of any mathematical concepts.
The inhabitants of the banks of the Maici river live in a world unlike our own. The difference goes beyond the lack of computers, cell phones and cars; one would be hard pressed to find that technology in the middle of any forest. Rather, for the Pirahã, numbers are just not a big part of their life. They can barely count, and anything more difficult than that is right out. That’s not all that’s different about them; They lack any examples of art or fiction, and their language has a grammar so radical that it could possibly disprove the theory that certain principles of grammar are shared by all languages— the universal grammar theory. The Pirahã certainly have a unique way of life.
The Pirahã are terrible mathematicians, unable to do even simple addition. Then again, it’s difficult to do any sort of calculation when you have no concept or words for exact numbers. There are really only three numeric words in Pirahã – “one,” “two,” and “many.” To add to the confusion, “one” doesn’t always mean exactly one – it could mean one fish, a small fish, or only a few fish.
There used to be a belief, however, that number words were not necessary for a concept of mathematics. Other tribes with similarly limited numerical vocabularies have managed to practice some mathematical concepts, however researchers have failed to teach the Pirahã even the most basic math. After eight months of lessons, none of the Pirahã could do anything more complicated than counting up to three. The rest of the mathematics is far beyond their grasp. This is not to say that they do not understand what math is— just that they cannot seem to do any of it.
Numbers are not the only limited part of their vocabulary. Their language lacks quantifiers such as “all,” “every,” “most,” “few,” etc. There are no basic color words— red could be described as “blood-like” but there is no single word for “red.” Also limited is their kinship system, for which there are only terms for direct biological descendants (daughter, son) and for people of differing generations (i.e., one generation older). There are even some claims by researchers that the Pirahã borrowed their pronoun set from a neighboring tribe and did not even have any before recent times!
Of course, it would be difficult to develop a complex vocabulary when limited to just ten consonants and vowels, a number which makes the Pirahã language the world’s most phonetically limited language. But while the language cannot be written, it can be whistled, hummed, or put into music.
When one starts to look at the grammar of their language, it becomes even stranger still. For one thing, it lacks the concept of perfect tense. Of more interest to linguists is the discovery that the Pirahã language does not allow for one phrase to be embedded inside another, which means the language is not recursive. This property of the Pirahã language runs counter to the theory of universal grammar, since recursion is one of the properties of the theory.
As far as researchers know, there are no fictional stories nor mythologies in the Pirahã culture. All stories are descriptions of experiences, and these stories only go back one or two generations at most. There is no collective memory of the Pirahã people; no history of their people is recorded by them. There is practically no art in their culture; whatever drawings they make are only used to describe the spirit world that they have experienced and are not drawn for aesthetic purposes.
Another extraordinary quality of the Pirahã is their amazing physical endurance. They take short naps from fifteen minutes to a few hours, usually sleeping no more than two hours a day. They only occasionally sleep through the night. On top of that, they often starve themselves— even if they have enough food— just from a desire to be more strong.
One might think that this unique way of life would disappear if introduced to modern life, but this is not the case. They do not live in isolation; they have been in contact with other Brazilians for over two hundred years, and they have sold goods to traders for quite a while. Rather than being absorbed by their neighbors, they resist. The reason for this is because the Pirahã see themselves as intrinsically better than the people around them, and so they do their best to avoid being like others. Maybe they resisted progress so fiercely that they have succeeded in keeping their culture different from those around them. Then again, maybe they really are superior, and we just lack the mental faculties to realize it.
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Wow. That’s another damn interesting article. ..I wonder how it’s possible to really test their abilities if they have this resistance to the ways of outsiders? I get a feeling there’s more to it than them just not being able to grasp complex algebra, but I can’t put my finger on what it might be. I think I have to read up on these people more.
I’d like to know how large the village is, and how many members are in the tribe. If it’s small enough, everything one would need to know about the daily activites should be visible, so there wouldn’t be a need to develop the need to communicate that information.
For example, my boss brings his dog with him to work. I know when he arrives each morning because I hear his dog’s tag clanking as he runs down the hall. No one ever needs to ask if the boss is there, because everyone will already know by sound.
Furnace said: “I’d like to know how large the village is, and how many members are in the tribe.
Just to fill in the gaps of knowledge: I read numbers of around 150-200 Pirahã left. Their numbers are dwindling and some are worried about the culture’s extinction. Also, the village moves about the banks of the Maici river – it’s not one static place.
Furnace said: “I’d like to know how large the village is, and how many members are in the tribe.
Many. Or maybe one. One entire village of Pirahã.
Agree…another damn interesting article.
Too bad the reach of Bill Gates, Motorola, Verizon, Cingular, Comcast, etc. only reach so far.
Fascinating, to be sure. Once the “hoax” aspect has been removed (remember the ‘stone age’ tribe supposedly found in the Philipines that was actually planted, apparently for the touristry or publicity or some such), this should be one of the last chances to speculate about evolutionary concepts at the societal level. Do they cook and prepare food, or just eat everything raw and by hand? Do they have buildings of any sort, or do they rely on nature and nesting? Do they have complex tools or just primative stuff? Do they have the concept of ownership or is everything held communally? Is there coupling and family units or are they parenting as a village? The list could go on and on. Spirituality? Afterlife concepts? Seasons based on ‘moons’ or annual rites, animal birthing, plant flowering/harvest?
It’s interesting. But I’m just wondering, if they’re so superior, what would happen if they need to combat a modern police force? (not army, just police unit)
What I am curious about is why they think they are superior. What makes them believe they are our betters? Just the fact that anybody who reads this can read this, makes them superior to the Piraha. We can read, write, tell time, do math etc, etc.
So what I want to know is why they think they are better.
I dont want to sound condescending or anything, I just dont know how else to express my confusion with this.
It’s just about what your definition of “better” is. And I, honestly, don’t mind at all that they think they’re superior. Good for them.
Prince said: “What I am curious about is why they think they are superior. What makes them believe they are our betters? Just the fact that anybody who reads this can read this, makes them superior to the Piraha. We can read, write, tell time, do math etc, etc.
So what I want to know is why they think they are better.
I dont want to sound condescending or anything, I just dont know how else to express my confusion with this.”
Because they place their priorities differently to us. Things like reading and writing are a way for us to show our intelligence, but they put emphasis on other things.
Maybe they just pretending to be stupid in front of the people who went to test them…
>> What I am curious about is why they think they are superior.
Almost everybody believes their own culture superior.
cornerpocket said: “Fascinating, to be sure. Once the “hoax” aspect has been removed (remember the ‘stone age’ tribe supposedly found in the Philipines that was actually planted, “
I remember that hoax. Hopefully this is not the same, but I think we are more “superior” than the generation that pulled that off for a time on our “one generation older.”
Wouldn’t the small size of the tribe imply imbreeding? It is scientific fact that DNA collisions between brothers and sisters creates offspring that is often disabled, either mental, physical, sterile, or all three (I mean “many” for any tribesmen reading this)…..making it difficult for the intelligence to grow, that is the regular world’s definition of it. DI did it again…great stuff to ponder.
Here’s another cultural curiosity. ‘Modern’ people, even the learned and mostly open-minded folks that read and comment here, seem to equate technology with superiority. “How can these morons consider themselves superior, when all I have to do is one quadratic equation and flip open my cell phone to prove otherwise?” We have developed a technology based arrogance that often astounds me.
Oh, the Pirahã. Found them a couple times on Wikipedia.
I wish Wikipedia explained better what recursion means in languages. I know what recursion is, but I don’t see what exactly it is in a language.
I was thinking down the same lines as Davida, they may have such a hard time grasping higher math , art, fiction, etc. because imbreading has caused mental defects. This would also lend to why they didn’t have a way of communicating family ties until recent times; why convey family ties if they mean nothing.
I wish Wikipedia explained better what recursion means in languages. I know what recursion is, but I don’t see what exactly it is in a language.”
One example of recursion – I can say a sentence like “The guy who hired the other guy who hired the other guy who hired the other guy talked to me yesterday.” One can really say “who hired the other guy” as many times as one wants in that sentence and still have it be proper English (though you’ll irritate whoever you’re talking to).
If you want to see more about recursion in relation to the Pirahã, check out page 19 of the “Cultural Constraints” pdf linked to in the above article.
Actually, now that I read that again I do not know if that’s embedding or recursion… Maybe I should get one of the linguists on the staff to check out what I wrote, heh. Regardless, it’s argued to not be possible in Pirahã.
Marius: There’s a historical tendency for technologically superior cultures to kill technologically inferior ones. It’s difficult to argue the superiority of one’s culture if one is dead.
Plus, I really like modern plumbing *takes a drink of cool, clean tap water*
Two things:
I could see how their culture’s emphasis on strength could pretty easily lead them to think that their’s is a superior culture. Imagine if you only had to sleep a few hours a day. Someone who needed a solid eight hours would look a little soft or undisciplined, perhaps.
As for recursiveness in language, my understanding is that it is recursiveness that allows for the indefinite embedding of clauses within clauses within a grammatically correct sentence. So, for instance, take the sentence, “The dog runs.” Grammatically, that can be replaced by, “The dog runs quickly,” which replaces the verb with a verb clause. You can also insert a subject clause such as, “The dog from down the block runs quickly.” Grammatically speaking, recursiveness allows you to build an indefinitely long sentence by inserting more and more clauses where appropriate. It’s not pretty, but it is grammatically correct to say, “The dog from down the block that I see occasionally on my way to work in the mornings, but only on sunny days, runs more quickly than any other dog I’ve seen in my 25 years on this planet, for which I am greatful for every one.”
See the work of Charles Dickens for more well-crafted examples of recursiveness than I could ever provide.
“they have sold goods to traders for quite a while”
Does this means that regardless of the quantity or quality of their goods, it always costs the same;
one, two, three or many?
tel703 said: “”they have sold goods to traders for quite a while”
Does this means that regardless of the quantity or quality of their goods, it always costs the same;
one, two, three or many?”
good point… how do they work those details out?
I think the definition of ‘superior’ is very subjective depending on what it is refering to, and who is doing the refering. I would assume that they are talking about their physical abilties that make them so superior, and in that sense, I would agree. Go on, throw your average Joe into a forest with only a leather skirt around his privates.. you’ll find him a few days later dead. Technology has let the weak prosper. In any ecological enviorment it’s survival of the fittest, and the biggest bada$$ of all leads the pack.
I’m Russian and therefor naturally have a bigger superiority complex then most Americans, but nothing gets to me more then some skinny white boy with glasses trying to tell me what to do, when I’m 6ft, 210lbs muscle and could easily beat the life out of him.
Not to say that I’m against technology and all of its spoils. I’m very much fond of it and would probably go into heavy withdrawls and eventually switch to heroin if I ever lost the interent :'(.
It’s too bad that their language and understanding is so limited – but maybe our language is over complicated, and our concepts are all straight up BS from theoretical scientists. Maybe these guys really know whats up (even though I have my doubts), I think it would be very interesting to talk to one of these people and try to understand.
There was a village question above
Piraha Tribe – Southern Amazonia (Brazil)
~ 100 speakers (1996) in 5 villages
http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/philos/dascal/papers/endlang.htm
MaddMan said: “Things like reading and writing are a way for us to show our intelligence, but they put emphasis on other things.”
I would argue that we read and write for other reasons, i.e. creative expression, communication, pleasure and to increase our intelligence, to name a few.
I have a general question: how do linguists begin to understand a language that is completely unique in its grammatical structure? Obviously it would be easy to learn basic nouns like “tree” or “water” but when you get down to the verb structures of a language, where does one begin to learn? To put it simply, how do you learn a language that is almost opposite your own without any prior knowledge?
To answer someone’s question about how the Piraha trade. From the website of Danial Everett, who studied the Piraha:
“The Pirahã travel up and down the river in canoes they either make from the bark of trees or steal from nearby settlements and unwary traders or hunters that venture down the river. The traders occasionally visit, carrying a few items from outside the jungle that the Pirahã have become fond of in recent years. The women are always after fabric to make dresses for themselves. Men’s shorts are also popular. Matches are popular as well but tobacco and especially whiskey are favorites. The Pirahã gather exotic Red Wood, brazil nuts and rubber trees as trade items. With no currency, no number system of their own and no familiarity with the monetary value of these things, they tend to be the losers in these exchanges. “
Maybe they live by the idea that absolute ignorance is zen?
Those that are of the opinion that we are way more advanced than the Piraha, and that the members of the tribe are simply “ignorant” and “stupid” would do well to step off their soap boxes.
As has been mentioned previously, “success” is defined differently from culture to culture, and from person to person. These people are much more attuned to things not visible on this layer of reality, which we can only dream of. Sure they don’t have cellphones, they don’t need them to succeed in life, to reach their goals.
And lest you think “what they believe is just a crock”… don’t be so sure. There are a number of examples of those leading simple lives intuiting something before science confirms it. For instance, mystics and psychics have spoken about auras and “higher vibrations” for millenia, but the existence of the aura (in the form of high frequencies emitted from the body) was only recently confirmed.
Maybe we are the ignorant ones.
I certainly hope you are not addressing me in your case. What I said, I said without any intentions to condescend their way of life. Nevertheless, the only proper word to address a lack of curiosity (as these people do) is “Ignorance”; regardless of what their intentions are for it. Whether it be to achieve a sense of zen, or to be anti-entropic.
Iscariot, my comment was partly directed towards you, but I agree, I misunderstood your comment. I guess after the myriad of other comments to the tune of “these people are stupid” I was a little perturbed already.
I agree, the Piraha are ignorant in some respects, technologically and otherwise. I think they are, however, no more ignorant than us. In the developed, “civilized” world, we are simply ignorant in other respects.
If we keep our minds open, we can find something to learn in (almost) every culture. When we close our minds and think we have nothing to learn, is when we have most to learn.
My apologies for the misunderstanding.
Maybe the lack of sleep and some time to adapt made their offspring lose a couple parts of their brains?
When you sleep, your brain fixes itself up, and if there’s less to fix, it doesn’t have to work as hard(?), and if it only has 2 hours to fix the brain, it won’t have the time to fix the parts that aren’t useful anyway, so it could get rid of them…
Whoever wanted to know about recursion and got the answer already but I’ll answer anyway: Math’s recursive because of the perenthises. Like in 2+(2*(7-6))+(7/(8*2/9)).. You have the statement 2+()+() and every perenthise set has another statement in it(and those statements can have more perenthises and statements, ect). English is cause “(He ran me over) because ((I was late) because (I did it over there) and (died)) and (read a book about it).” The sentance has sentences in it(or predicates in some cases).
There is no reference to ‘spirituality’ among the Piraha but such things often result in the sense of superiority, as in ‘chosen by God’ or ‘closer to God’ or ‘destined for God’s heaven once this veil of tears is over’. It doesn’t take technology or savvy or language gymnastics and artistry to create the illusion of superiority because a little dose of “Jesus loves me (more than He does you)” will suffice.
FMZ, no need to apologize. Simply clearing up what I meant.
Although it’s against what we believe in our society, I believe there might be a great wisdom in keeping yourself ignorant. If knowledge is power, and power can be used for destruction – absolute widespread ignorance is lasting peace.
Also, if Zen if clearmindedness, nothing is more clearer when there is nothing to think about.
If I were to blindly guess at why they believe themselves superior, I’d ponder a few possible answers:
1. They require the bare minimum to survive. While we rely on technology, they rely on nothing.
2. They leave hardly any ecological footprint at all. Thus respect, and are in tune with, the natural world more.
3. They are content with no stimulants. They aren’t weak to boredom.
Those are very interesting points Iscariot, and I think you are right. We are technologically superior, but should that technology fail small tribes like this one, which know how to survive without computers because they’ve been doing it their entire existence, will prevail.
I could believe that they are superior to other cultures and people they’ve encountered in quite a number of ways, some of which we may not comprehend. They have already demonstrated an understanding of their body that probably eludes. Recent research shows that starvation style diets prolong life for example, and they use periods of starvation to ‘make them stronger’. They appear to have some wisdom in this area, or at least a belief system that is serving them well enough. We must take care not to let our cultural biases affect our interpretations. Take their trading for example. You might feel they aren’t getting fair value for the items they trade. But the items they are offering may not have much value to them. They balance the effort it takes for them to collect and prepare the items versus the effort it would take to create the items they acquire. If they acquire items they value, yet aren’t able to create at all, just how much do you think they would be willing to pay? Perhaps we overvalue brazil nuts.
They may have other knowledge and understanding we don’t have, and can’t comprehend. I recommend anyone who doubts their superiority might benefit from going to live with them for a year. And no, you can’t bring your coleman stove. Live as they do. Anyone who did that would have a new respect for them.
I would be very interested in their botanical knowledge. I cannot claim to be superior to a group of people who can live in the rainforest and know what plant, mushroom or berry will kill you and which will not. I certainly couldn’t do that. Having a cellphone doesn’t make me superior to anyone. Reading and the ability to do calculus doesn’t make me superior to someone with encyclopedic knowledge of their enviroment. I am astounded at the arrogance we exhibit when exposed to something different. We immediately jump to the conclusion that they are inbred and mentally challenged.
Don’t bother talking about “superiority”. Talk about power – that’s something everyone can at least define. “superior” means nothing.
Everybody thinks their own people are superior because they construct criteria to match their own strengths and they remain (deliberately or not) ignorant of other cultures and their strengths. Except Western leftists, of course, who hate their own culture. But that’s another story.
It also seems likely that the Piraha, like all other indigenous tribe societies, don’t care at all about the environment, nor would it likely even register on their mind that they could have an effect on it, because they can’t. As with the North American natives, their ecological impact is limited only by their very limited power.
So yes, I do believe they pretty much every society is more powerful than the Piraha. We can blather about connections to nature and all that crap all we want, but tribesmen with spears will still never stand up to the discipline, order, structure, experience and technology of a modern army. Inferior? Meaningless. Weak? Definitely. They’re lucky they don’t have anything worth taking – its the only thing that’s gotten them this far.
This sleep cycle they have reminds me of the Uberman’s sleep cycle . They’re able to master it very well, I applaud them.
Hmmmm…awake all night is a plus, but no iPod? Hmmm… I’ll say this: those people got grapes!
It’s like the Björk song: there’s definately, definately, definately no logic — Human behaviour!
FMZ said: “With no currency, no number system of their own and no familiarity with the monetary value of these things, they tend to be the losers in these exchanges. “”
I guess this comes down to that saying.. “One mans trash is another mans treasure”. They may not have any idea of the monetary value of something, but thats a value represented in a way that means nothing to them. I imagine it would be hard for them to accept that because rubber is worth half the value of cotton (eg!) they’d need to part with more rubber than they’d get back in cotton/cloth.
Yet, they would have no knowledge on how to cure tobacco, or distill/prepare whiskey, nor would have encountered either naturally so I’m guessing a heap of brazil nuts or rubber from a rubber tree is a small price to pay for something they obviously enjoy.
Then again, they have no knowledge of a price, or paying for something, this confuses me no end when I’m trying to think about how they could value something when they have no concept of a “value”??
The more I think about it, the more I realise just how hard it must be to get any grasp of their culture/people.
Regarding Recursion
It’s my understanding that recursion is self-referential. Linguistically, this would be
demonstrated with the following sentence, “This sentence is six words long,” or “This sentence is false.” As far as the mention of embedding a sentence the example would be “He said, ‘Walla walla bing bang,’ as he mixed up the potion.” This can be repeated ad infinitum, “”””He said, “””she muttered, “”he brayed, “they chanted, “Bim bam boom.” “” “”” “”””
Tynan said: “So yes, I do believe they pretty much every society is more powerful than the Piraha. We can blather about connections to nature and all that crap all we want, but tribesmen with spears will still never stand up to the discipline, order, structure, experience and technology of a modern army. Inferior? Meaningless. Weak? Definitely. They’re lucky they don’t have anything worth taking – its the only thing that’s gotten them this far.”
lol
In a Bader-Meinhoff moment I was reading about the Pirahã recently. In this article it was suggested that the apparent impoverishment of the Pirahã culture and language was a result of several centuries’ worth of destruction of their way of life by tribal rivals and European invaders – that what we see of the Pirahã nowadays is all that’s left of a more complex system. A bit like the boys’ society in ‘Lord of the Flies’, perhaps. The article suggested evidence for this might be the extreme paring of the language down to almost concrete terms only, the lack of a long-running history/mythology, the basic kinship system, and even the endurance of the Pirahã themselves.
It was either a New Scientist interview with someone like Daniel Everett, or the book ‘Sick Societies’ by Robert Edgerton. I can chase it up if anyone’s interested.
Tynan said: “So yes, I do believe they pretty much every society is more powerful than the Piraha. We can blather about connections to nature and all that crap all we want, but tribesmen with spears will still never stand up to the discipline, order, structure, experience and technology of a modern army. Inferior? Meaningless. Weak? Definitely. They’re lucky they don’t have anything worth taking – its the only thing that’s gotten them this far.”
This says nothing negative about the Piraha. Power does not equal success. In fact, it says something VERY negative about those that feel that they can take whatever the hell they want from someone not as “powerful” as them.
their concepts should be looked at as a reflection of reality and not their progession. Just like a kilogram’s measurement could seem odd to an american or yannomamo, so should the idea of 1,2,3. Existence is peculiar, and their perception of it is as valid as the next. Their perceptions and descriptions meaningful.
I would imagine that its not so much that they enjoy a Dominican and a snifter of Scotch, so much as they, like all societies introduced to something new(to them) rapidly, are addicted to them.
Also don’t include me with the plebians who dare dream of their superiority. When I stated that I was curious about their belief, that was it, just curious. I didn’t wish to start every ignorant hick off on his own (alleged) superiority.
I keep reading about these people on the Internet. It is funny how we are so in love with the past that we are blinded to fact that these people are a displaced culture of who have inbred and are retarded. There are other articles that point this out. The only amazing thing I see is that they have survived this long.
FMZ said: “This says nothing negative about the Piraha. Power does not equal success. In fact, it says something VERY negative about those that feel that they can take whatever the hell they want from someone not as “powerful” as them.”
FMZ said: “To answer someone’s question about how the Piraha trade. From the website of Danial Everett, who studied the Piraha:
“The Pirahã travel up and down the river in canoes they either make from the bark of trees or steal from nearby settlements and unwary traders or hunters that venture down the river.”
as you yourself pointed out, the piraha clearly have no qualms about taking things that don’t belong to them simply because they can. so any negative conclusion you can draw regarding those who feel might makes right can as easily be applied to the piraha.
Iscariot said: “Although it’s against what we believe in our society, I believe there might be a great wisdom in keeping yourself ignorant. If knowledge is power, and power can be used for destruction – absolute widespread ignorance is lasting peace.”
while knowledge may breed power i don’t think anybody can argue that ignorance similarly causes peace. a lack of knowledge in chemistry and ballistics never stopped ancient civilizations from beating each other to death with clubs and rocks.
Marius said: “Here’s another cultural curiosity. ‘Modern’ people, even the learned and mostly open-minded folks that read and comment here, seem to equate technology with superiority. “How can these morons consider themselves superior, when all I have to do is one quadratic equation and flip open my cell phone to prove otherwise?” We have developed a technology based arrogance that often astounds me.”
It’s a good point. If you haven’t ever read it, you should check out Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. He argues that many of these “more primitive” people are much smarter than the average “civilized” person. Their spatial skills are much stronger than ours. A lot of the book is giving good examples of why technology doesn’t equal intelligence and superiority.
Owwww, the wonders of my Brazil…
orc_jr: Ignorance in that case leans towards “Unambitious”.
When we look at other cultures, we view them through our own world experience, through our own cultural prejudice. We believe we are superior and yet to these people, we must appear to be very strange. They probably wonder why we focus on concepts that seem so obviously unimportant. It would be interesting to find out what they really think about the researchers. Maybe they think we are a bunch of anal-retentive girly-men.
Why is there so much debate about superiority? What does it matter what either thinks? Everyone weighs their own superiority differently. I don’t think anyone really is superior to anyone else, but that certain people (or groups of people) are better at certain things than others. Also, their inability to conceive of mathematics is probably not a result of inbreeding. Since concepts are not related to physicalities in our brain, it would probably not be genetic. (think: someone with Down Syndrome is not unable to understand math, they’re just less adept at doing it). It’s probably a result of them not being raised with that concept. Think of the colors. They don’t have a concept of red as we do. Imagine trying to explain red to a blind man. He has no pre-conceived notion of what red would be like. He might know that blood and apples are of the same, but he still does not know what ‘red’ is. Perhaps mathematics is just a concept to which they cannot understand because it is something they do not have. Just as we cannot conceive of having more than 5 senses (some argue ESP as well…) they cannot conceive of math. If an alien were to come to earth with another sense, we would be just as unable to understand it. Imagine having another way of knowing an object that is there in front of you without using any of your 5 (or 6) senses. We cannot because we don’t have these. While senses and mathematics seem different, they both exist as concept to our mind. It’s probable that this is similar. Although other tribes may have been able to be taugh mathematics, the vast differences between their society and our own may be aligned in such a way as to disallow concept of mathematics for them.
I for one will welcome our new Piraha overlords. : )
Hey, a damn interesting article indeed..
There was a question about how linguists actually map the grammar of an entirely new language. As far as I know, Chomsky’s model is widely used in this field as a means of description. You can also try to compare the language with existing languages that you already know, that should help a lot. The model devised by Chomsky can be used as a quantifying method that gives you places and frequencies of words. If you at least know some kind of a similar language, you should be able, by means of various probability models, to find out what the language is about. Then there is the field research – exactly what you said about it being easy to find out what the word for ‘tree’ or ‘water’ is. The only problem with this is that you actually need something written to do such analysis.. And you’ve got to have loads of texts :) The problem is that in spoken word you cannot deduce word boundaries, it just isn’t possible. In normal connected speech you don’t make pauses unless you want to stress something or unless you need to breathe. In addition, in some languages the synthetic tendencies (inflection, afixes as means of conjugation and more stuff that sounds too weird to list) are too strong to actually identify a ‘word’. Phoneticians come first, then the real linguists :) the ones who really compare languages. I hope that’s fair enough, let me have some pie now.
floweringmind said: “I keep reading about these people on the Internet. It is funny how we are so in love with the past that we are blinded to fact that these people are a displaced culture of who have inbred and are retarded. There are other articles that point this out. The only amazing thing I see is that they have survived this long.”
If you would have read the sources for the article, you would have seen that it says that genetic factors such as retardation from imbreeding do not apply here. They frequently intermarry with outsiders to the point that they don’t have a unique physical characteristic that sets them apart from other people (Except for maybe one I believe, I’m too lazy to look it up). It’s just all culture.
personally i hate maths, and living in a society without it sounds like heaven
I myself sometimes think what is the damn point of our complex and confusing society. You have to do so many things in order to be successful which basically means produce a successful next generation. Hmm…
Anybody consider the possibility that these people are talking in the simplist of ways to ‘help out’ the foreigners? Maybe just like we sometimes accommodate people from other countries, when we are in a tolerant mood, by using rudimentary words. Sorta like talking to children and not showing off our twenty-five cent vocabulary to make sure they ‘get it’.
Someone said that they were once a more complex people who had been savaged and beaten down by other tribes and visitors….which seems improbable unless there were several generations involved. Should we think that a language can degenerate into primitivity in one’s own lifetime??? Not counting the San Fernando Valley, of course.
I was expecting a modern Nacirema-type thing. That is very interesting though.
Very interesting. First post, but I read about these guys in New Scientist. In the 1960’s, a study was done on them, and they were asked “what is your theory on creation of the univese?”. They recorded their answer on a tape recorder, and made up all sorts of theories. Later, a proper translation revealed that they were asking for whiskey, which some traders gave them. As they later found out, these people have no theory on how the universe was created. They are missing many, many things that many different cultures have. I don’t think they are inferior, just that they are much more simple. However, I hold grave fears for their future. Someone else on this board commented that they have no power at all. They are at the mercy of anyone with a gun. If they don’t modernize, they’re going to be dead sooner or later, whether from disease or warfare.
I’d bet a healthy wager that if any one of us went on 2 hours of sleep a day for a while, we’d also have a hard time doing anything more mathematically complicated than counting to three. Has anyone tried teaching them some math after a good night of sleep? Interesting.
hey kafka, i read that article too! is that the one where they had the most simple vocabulary?
This article should really discuss the controversy over this more. The issue is raised by some commentators as to whether this is a hoax. It’d be more accurate to say that a lot of the claims about this group are considered controversial, and this group has largley been studied by the Everetts whose conclusions are certainly worthy of further study but are not likely to be the last word on the subject.
Short version — interesting claims, but it’ll be more interesting when those claims are independently verified by other researchers.
this WOWED me.. i mean.. i cant even SAY how old i am.. wow
its really interesting….. wish to learn even upto 9
Prince said: “What I am curious about is why they think they are superior. What makes them believe they are our betters? Just the fact that anybody who reads this can read this, makes them superior to the Piraha. We can read, write, tell time, do math etc, etc.
So what I want to know is why they think they are better.
Perhaps their belief in their superiority lies in the fact that they can survive without the aid of technology. The vast majority of people would die if they were stripped of their microwaves and refridgerators.
They really want to get more sleep, but the inability to count sheep is the problem ;)
Prince said: “What I am curious about is why they think they are superior. What makes them believe they are our betters? Just the fact that anybody who reads this can read this, makes them superior to the Piraha. We can read, write, tell time, do math etc, etc.
So what I want to know is why they think they are better.
I dont want to sound condescending or anything, I just dont know how else to express my confusion with this.”
Maybe they are better because they lead full lives without mathematics and reading. How much of what we know and what we can do is just useless clutter?
Nobody knows the actual details of that culture. What we do know, is only the interpretation of some people who have visited the place.
I know a foreigner who has a bizzare opinion about the culture of my country from what he’s read about it. Sometimes I feel like knocking him on the head and telling him to look at our culture thru unbiased eyes and then he’d see what our culture really is like. All that most people can do is to make assumptions about others, without understanding facts! But then, that’s what society has always been like!
Sir, you ought to read this:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080714111940.htm
Apparently, this is even stranger, and more interesting.
By the way, your site does not run very well on Safari. Oh, whatever.
I dont really care about their lack of technology or think them inferior, but i if they have zero art or fiction and mythologies, It’s hard for an average person to not think that something is lacking… Obviously since, I think, they have nothing to compare it too, (other cultures) they probably don’t see it as strange, but I can’t think of anything more strange. I think the world would be a horrible place without art, or any recognizable form of human creativity. To me it would seem like the death of imagination. Then again maybe they do have some form of art that we are just incapable of comprehending.
P.S. I think “cultures” in general are overrated
A few observations I have as a virgin DI poster (albeit 6 months or so after the debate waned):
The argument that the Piraha often come out worse off in trades seems to me a complete certainty, based simply on their inability to differentiate between 5 and 50. Regardless of how they value any particular commodity, if they’re as willing to trade 10 Brazil nuts for a bottle of whiskey as 150 Brazil nuts for the same… they’re getting boned on the trade, pretty clear to me.
I have a theory on how to quantify “superiority”, but I’ll get to that in a second…
The most interesting idea that popped up for me reading the comments here is this:
Some have suggested here that the Piraha’s lack of mathematical ability (amongst other things) is because they sleep only a few hours a night, giving them less time to process the day’s activities and learn from them.
I suggest that it is, in fact, the opposite. Perhaps BECAUSE they have such a limited communication/comprehension system they only REQUIRE a few hours to process their daily input. If this is the case, then way back in their cultural infancy Darwinian Evolution may favour Fred, who wakes at 2am, throws a leg over the nearest available female, does so again at 5am and again at 8am… as opposed to Bill, who gets a solid 8hours and wakes in time for his 8am saunter down procreation boulevard. Given a few thousand years of repetition, Fred and his kin would surely out-reproduce Bill and his clan, thus leaving a Piraha society of short-napping leg-overthrowers… if you know what I mean.
Back to the crux of the proposition… seems decidedly un-Darwinian for any behavior that limits procration time (that doesn’t inhibit procreative proficiency, generally due to mortality concerns) to survive, by definition.
Put more simply, Darwinian theory states that the Piraha’s requirement of only a few hours sleep provides a higher procreation rate than more sleep.
At the risk of harping on, it seems that the vast majority of societies have succeeded by becoming more mentally complex, requiring more sleep to process said complexities, and forming compartmentalized societies to make up for 1/3 of the day that they are out of action (and vulnerable to predators).
The Piraha, as my proposition goes, have gone the other way, sleeping little, requiring less brain maintenance (sleep) and being awake to both avoid predators and procreate.
Jesus, I’m clearly writing too much here… meh.
So, how to quantify “superiority”. I suggest that superiority can be judged by a societies understanding of the world they live in. By understanding the nature of the world a society can better judge how they want to live in it. Anyone disagree with that? To those that do, my example is this:
A society that believes if they do not pray 10 hours a day to the God of Sky Altitude, the sky will fall. The sky clearly will not fall if they don’t do this, therefore they are wasting their time. They may be happy to do this, but a society who understands that the sky will not fall can also choose to act the same way… or not… hence being “superior”.
Extending that idea, societies that understand things such as chemistry and physics can develop technology and weaponry that can threaten their own existence. Is this an advantage over a peaceful simpistic society, maybe not, but I still believe it to be superior. The fact that the former society chooses to use its knowledge to produce a threat to its own existence simply proves it less superior to one that, with the same knowledge, is capable of NOT producing the same threat.
End rant. :)
Opinions vigorously encouraged, in fact, demanded.
Mullin
I will valiantly deny any possible superiority of any person who cannot understand moderately complex math. Savants are an limited exception.
i lke cheese
i like cheese
If they don’t count, how do they sell things?
There is an interesting book about the Pirahã called “Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle” by the American linguist Daniel Leonard Everett.