Darkness in El Dorado

[Richard Romeo]

Lots of controversy over Patrick Tierney's critical look at the ill-effect 
anthropologists James Neel and Napoleon Chagnon had on the Yanamani Tribes 
in the Amazon starting in the late 60s.

Despite some compelling claims, I wonder if Tierney is reaching when he says 
that Neel, who's research was sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission, 
wanted to prove that the Yanamani were war-like and aggressive, despite 
evidence to the contrary, in this age of Vietnam (this was 1968), the idea 
that so-called primitive societies were driven by blood-lust and murder (due 
to some dominant male trait, which would lead those more aggressive to be 
more viril and have more offspring, and actually be the impetus for, and 
prime movers in society), in some crazy way re-enforcing the militaristic 
proclivities of the American endeavor overseas.

Much of Pynchon's criticism is just this, but I wonder when a journalist or 
a reporter does the same without the buffer of art, whether those claims 
lose some of its validity. It's one of the leaps in the book without any 
solid foundation, despite a plethora of other charges that are more 
grounded.

It's an interesting book, in any case.

Rich
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