Archive for the 'Anthropology' Category

In recent articles, the topic was the Sentinelese (category link) a hunter-gatherer tribe that is virtually untouched by modern civilization. They are extremely hostile to outsiders and even shot arrows at a Indian Air Force helicopter surveying the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

This article is about another interesting story of anthropology and what happens when worlds collide. The setting is the nation of Vanautu, an archipelago about 1,000 miles east of Australia. One of Vanautu’s islands, Tanna has about 30,000 residents and roughly 20% still practice a “cargo cult” called John Frum.

Cargo cult is term to describe what has happened when modern technology suddenly appears to isolated cultures. Local indigenous people assume that this technology was made by divine spirits and this sparks a cult that engages in activities like imitating the dress and behavior of the outsiders. This occurrence was widespread in WWII, when the American and Japanese military brought a massive amount of food, weapons, and other war matériel to their islands for the Pacific campaign.

After WWII was over, the endless supply chain of military supplies suddenly ceased when the outsiders left. They assumed that the Americans and Japanese knew how to summon their ancestors to send magical cargo from the heavens. So, they thought that if they behaved the same way, their ancestors would also deliver cargo planes full of canned goods and rifles. There are numerous accounts of islanders wearing headphones carved out of wood and sitting in control towers waiting for planes of cargo to arrive. They diligently maintained torches to light up runways at night and even saluted each other.

As you may have guessed, it wasn’t too long before these cults faded out but John Frum is still going fairly strong today because the arrival of the American military enhanced an existing pre-WWII cult. Back in the 1930’s, a cult was formed under the premise that if the islanders resisted all forms of European society, all the foreigners would leave and they would get to have all the material wealth that their colonial masters possessed. This cult picked up stream as WWII approached, but when 300,000 Americans arrived, the cult’s prophesy became much more believable. Not only did the Americans have enormous amounts of power and cargo, members of John Frum were deeply impressed that white and black American soldiers were working together in a way that highly contrasted to the treatment they received from the white colonists. All this led them to believe that their savior was an American. (The cult name John Frum probably came about because of the way American soldiers would introduce themselves: “Hi, I’m John from America”)

In the hope of attracting their American savior to fulfill the prophesy and being prosperity to all, every February 15th is John Frum Day in parts of Tanna. They conduct elaborate ceremonies at the base of Mount Yasur an active volcano where the spirit of John Frum is said to reside. Dressed in an old military uniform with adorned with medals and even the badge of the 101st Airborne, Chief Isaac Wan presided over the 50th John Frum Day earlier this week. Members of the cult with “USA” painted on their chests conducted drills with bamboo rifles, saluted a huge American flag, and played the American national anthem on bamboo flutes.

While this is interesting from anthropology standpoint, Marty Meth, a tourist from New York described a light-hearted viewpoint of the ceremony: “It’s really nice to see Americans welcome here since in so many places in the world we’re not so welcome these days.”

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. “Cargo cult lives on in South Pacific” by Phil Mercer, BBC News

2. “Cargo cult”, Wikipedia entry.

3. “John Frum”, Wikipedia entry.

In yesterday’s article, I talked about a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Sentinelese who live on North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean.

As a follow-up article, I want to talk about their current status. The arrow attack on the Indian Air Force helicopter demonstrated, the Sentinelese survived the immediate impact of the 2004 tsunami. However, their long-term survival was uncertain because the massive earthquake that caused the tsunami had uplifted much of the coral reef where the Sentinelese fish.

True to their policy, the Indian government allowed no interference with the tribe after the helicopter incident so nobody knew if the Sentinelese could survive the damage to their food supply. (I have to say the Sentinelese weren’t given enough credit because I’m sure they have survived far worse tsunamis in their 30,000-60,000 years on North Sentinel Island). However, this question was answered in a tragic way for the modern world on January 2006. Two very drunk fisherman illegally fishing near the island did a bad job of anchoring their boat before going to sleep (that is, they passed out after too much palm wine) and their boat mistakenly drifted near shore during the night. The outcome of this mistake was predictable and tragic as the fisherman were killed by Sentinelese defenders.

Indian authorities attempted to recover the bodies, but Sentinelese warriors armed with arrows made it impossible for the recovery helicopter to land. According to every source I could find, no further attempts were made to recover the bodies buried in swallow graves on the beach. (To the surprise of many, the crude stereotype of “savage tribesmen” practicing cannibalism by boiling their victims in a giant bowl wasn’t true for the Sentinelese.)

While nobody should celebrate what happened (one can only imagine how terrifying the fishermen’s last moments were), the father of one of the victims said it well: “My son Pandit got his own justice. He was breaking the law, poaching and trespassing on land that wasn’t his own and he was murdered. What more is there to say? As far as I am concerned the Sentinelese are the victims in this, not my son. They live in constant terror of heavily armed poachers from Myanmar [Burma] and Port Blair. They were only defending themselves with bows and arrows and rocks in the only way they know how. What I do want is my son’s body back so my wife and I can bury him; we don’t want retribution. It is an impossible case to prosecute anyway.”

Stay tuned for more on the Sentinelese. They are fascinating from an anthropology standpoint, but the image of them firing Stone Age arrows at a 21st century helicopter is really compelling to me. You have to respect their fiercely independent “don’t tread on me” stance towards outsiders. While it’s impossible to know exactly what they are thinking when they see helicopters and outsiders, they are correct to assume being friendly could possibly mean the end of their existence as they know it via disease and daunting task of trying assimilate into today’s modern world. I would compare it the modern world’s potential reaction to invading aliens (even if they were friendly like in the movie E.T.)

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. “North Sentinel Island”

2. “Survival comes first for the last Stone Age tribe world” by Dan McDougall

In this current period of rapid globalization, the rise of technically advanced societies is unprecedented. This particular period of technological growth is rapid and very noticeable. It’s strange to think that the large scale public Internet as we know it today is a very recent development. I was baby-sitting for a friend’s 10-year old the other day and was helping him do a report on owls. He had found some good websites as source material and I felt like saying in a mocking elderly voice “back in the good ol’ days (I was his age 15 years ago), we walked barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways to library to lift a heavy Encyclopedia Britannica off the shelf to take notes on index cards.”

While I wax nostalgic about the “primitive” pre-Wikipedia days of Encyclopedia Britannica, there are still parts of this world where humans still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In the midst of the tragic news coming out of Southeast Asia after the massive December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, I remembered hearing a fascinating story about the Indian Air Force running helicopter sorties to survey the tsumani’s impact on numerous small islands in the Indian Ocean.

One of the islands the Indian Air Force checked on was the North Sentinel Island. When the helicopter came in for closer look, the inhabitants of the island attempted to shoot down the helicopters…with arrows. These inhabitants, known simply as the Sentinelese (nobody has been to figure out what they call themselves), are among the last remaining groups on the planet that have maintained complete isolation from the outside world and modern day technology.

This complete isolation is hard to believe in the 21st century, but every attempt to establish contact in the past has been met with fierce resistant thanks to the Sentinelese skill with the bow and arrow along with a overwhelming amount of courage and fearlessness. This unblinking foreign policy position has probably been maintained for thousands of years. Maybe even longer since the Sentinelese are part of the Negrito tribes that are believed to have arrived to the Great Andaman archipelago 30,000-60,000 years ago. DNA evidence has shown that they may be descendants of the earliest humans to migrate out of Africa.

At least for the time being, they will stay “frozen in time” because the Indian government has decided to simply leave them alone. In fact, the Indian Navy even runs patrols to make sure fisherman and curious tourists don’t venture into the 5 kilometer (~3 miles) buffer zone around the island.

Due to the scope of the 2004 tsunami, it was feared that even with these protections the Sentinelese could have been wiped out. The vigorous response to the helicopters showed otherwise. An interesting theory explaining their survival is 60,000 years of experience may have taught them to move inland when they feel earthquakes. Also, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle leads to a deep understanding of the environment and animals. Since many animals show behavior changes before storms and earthquakes, this have tipped them off to the situation even before sophisticated tsunami warning systems would have.

Stay tuned for more about the fascinating story of the Sentinelese.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. “Did Island Tribes Use Ancient Lore to Evade Tsunami?”

2.Stone Age tribe kills fisherman

This is the 2nd article in an ongoing series of articles discussing Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel. The 1st article in the series can be found here and a table of contents of this series can be found here.
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The first paragraph of Guns, Germs, Steel:
“This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren’t: as you will see, the answers to the question don’t involve human racial differences at all. The book’s emphasis is on the search for ultimate explanations, and on pushing back the chain of historical causation as far as possible.”

Yali’s question is very controversial subject because there are lot of people who have immoral answers. The mere effort to talk about Yali’s questions can be confused as effort to justify why certain groups of people have dominated others. As Mr. Diamond points out psychologists attempt to analyze the minds of rapists not to justify the act, but to understand the causes so that future rape crimes can be prevented.

Throughout history and even today have used very racist justifications for dominating and enslaving other groups of people. For example, slavery of Africans in the United States was justified for many slaveholders because it was believed that people with dark skin where somehow sub-human. Obviously this a ridiculous belief, but sadly the idea that one race is better than another still persists in our world. The Holocaust is the obvious example and by far the most horrific example, but Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing reconstruction of New Orleans have brought racism front and center once again.

The fact that you’re reading an article written by me is simply a byproduct of my environment. I was born into a loving family in the most powerful and wealthy nation the world has ever know. Would you be reading this article if I had been born into the few remaining hunter-gather tribes still in existent? The odds of that happening would be very slim.

As this book explained to me (and I will explain to you) is that Eurasian people were simply dealt a winning hand in terms of geography and ecology. They got lucky. Because they got lucky thousands of years ago, the basis for modern civilization came into existence. They got a head start and these advantages were passed along to my ancestors who came to America in early 20th century from England, Ireland, Poland, and Russia. That is why you’re reading this article. I’m no better a person than individuals born in a hunter-gather tribes during 1981. Not only is it arrogant and racist to believe this, it’s simply scientifically false.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

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Stay tuned for the next article in this series on Guns, Germs, and Steel.

For a table of contents of this series, click here.

One of the things on the docket for this science blog is a detailed discussion of great science books. The current plan is to breakdown a book (i.e. chapter a week). For people who haven’t read these books, it will be a great way of learning key concepts without having to read the entire book. Executive book summaries are becoming more and more popular, but I personally find them to be somewhat lacking. So, I hope to find the happy medium between a short summary and reading an entire book.

For people who have read the books , it will be a chance to revisit these books. I’m sure you have learned something after reading the book and this new knowledge will help you further understand concepts discussed on this blog. That’s what learning is all about: making connections with new and prior knowledge.

The first book I will discuss is one of my favorites: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

Mr. Diamond explains why Europe and America came to dominate the world in wealth and power during the past 500 years. He answers some very powerful and complicated questions like: why didn’t Native Americans colonize Europe and why didn’t Africans capture Europeans to be slaves in Africa?

The book begins in New Guinea where Mr. Diamond was doing research in the 1970s. White Europeans had colonized the island in the last 200 years and found a New Guinea population still using stone tools. The New Guineans were stunned to see all the tools and various goods (they called all these material goods “cargo”) that the Europeans brought to their island.

The thesis to this book is a question that a very inquisitive New Guinea politician named Yali asked the visiting researcher Mr. Diamond in 1973: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

He describes not having answer to Yali’s question at the time and this book is his way of answering. Before I read this book, I definitely didn’t have an answer to this question. It’s a hard topic to discuss because the theme of this book is integral to foundation of my country the United States. Let’s face it, Manifest Destiny and the westward expansion wasn’t just about conquering the wilderness – the ancestors of many American conquered a native population.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

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Next article in this Guns, Germs, and Steel discussion series: The Controversy of Yali’s Question

For a table of contents of this series, click here.