Alas, Poor Yuqui
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Evelyn Mackenzie, American Renaissance, July 1992
With each passing year more and more of the ancient Amazon forests are lost to slash and burn farmers, loggers, and miners. While this destruction endangers many species that depend on the forest for survival, it also yields surprises in the form of hitherto unknown creatures that have lived for centuries unmolested by the world beyond the jungle’s edge.
Among the more recent specimens unearthed from the heart of the Bolivian Amazon are the Yuqui. This discovery has been catalogued by neither botanist nor zoologist, for the Yuqui falls to the lot of the anthropologist. However, an article in the New York Times Magazine (Feb. 23, 1992) on these “accidents of history” suggests that the Yuqui might be more fitting subjects for the paleontologist.
Indeed, the Yuqui have far more in common with our pre-historic ancestors than with anyone walking the earth today. The Times introduces us to a band of two dozen or so Yuquis and their leader Ataiba (Yuqui for “anteater’s arm”) who were the third group coaxed from the forest by evangelical missionaries, in Dec. 1989 (the entire known population of Yuqui now stands at around 150).
Ataiba and his people believed themselves to be the only humans in existence and had never ventured out of the forest. Not surprisingly, the Yuqui word for “world” is the same as that for “leaves.” They spent their entire nomadic existence foraging for food or hunting small animals with bows and arrows—their only tools. Like homo erectus, who roamed the planet 1,000,000 to 500,000 years ago, the Yuqui carried glowing embers from place to place; they did not know how to make fire. That skill became common some 75,000 years ago, when Neanderthal man displaced homo erectus.
Fire-making is not the only way in which the Neanderthals outstripped the Yuqui. Neanderthals buried their dead, and their graves contain the remains of sick and old people, who could have survived only with the help of other tribesmen. The Yuquis left their sick and old behind to die and covered their dead with leaves.
Yuquis built no homes, but sheltered under palm fronds when it rained. They had no written language, no agriculture, no pottery, no metal smelting, no art, no domestic animals, no wheel. They wore no clothes. They were primitive even by stone-age standards. Nor did the Yuqui have an oral tradition. They had no history and they told no stories. It is hard to imagine a human being who has nothing to tell his children. The Yuqui did have slavery, though, and whenever a high-ranking Yuqui died, a slave was strangled to accompany the master’s spirit into the leaves.
The list of Yuqui non-achievements is a long one. However, as all readers of AR know, in this age, no people are born inferior, nor do they achieve inferiority; instead it is always thrust upon them” by the white man.
According to Allyn Stearman, an anthropology professor at the University of Central Florida, the Yuqui are not living fossils, but victims of the Spanish Conquest. Before the Spanish arrived, the Yuqui were part of an advanced, agricultural society, but were forced to flee into the jungle during the 16th Century to escape from Catholic missionaries. Where Prof. Stearman gets his information is not clear, since the Yuqui certainly cannot enlighten him, but he explains that after their escape from the clutches of Christianity the Yuqui “forgot” everything they had known.
Prof. Stearman argues that the Yuqui “lost” their spiritual leaders and healers, their knowledge of planting and pottery and fire. They also “forgot” all their arts, how to wear clothes, how to count, and despite the fact that they live in a land of many rivers, they forgot how to swim.
The Yuqui have now been settled in a missionary village, where white people are trying to jog their memories. Undoing 400 years of white wickedness may be a daunting task, but it pales in comparison with the prospect of turning a people with an achievement level somewhere between Homo Erectus and Neanderthal Man into productive 20th century citizens.
Although the Yuqui have never before planted or even stored food, the Inter-American Development Bank has set aside $240,000 to help make yeoman farmers out of them within two years. The usual crowd of uplift artists is chattering about “empowerment,” “dialogue,” and “choices.”
Ataiba, the tribal leader, seems to be setting the pace for his people. He has developed a taste for welfare and has given up hunting. He prefers to spend his days idly swinging in a hammock. Though he has made no attempt to learn the skills of Neanderthal Man, he has his eye on some of the fruits of modernity. In a hammock-side interview, he told the New York Times: “I want a big house like the missionaries. I want to eat that lovely food they eat. I don’t want to go back to the forest. The forest gives you great sadness.”
(Posted on October 3, 2008)
Comments
Indeed, the Yuqui have far more in common with our pre-historic ancestors than with anyone walking the earth today.
Somewhere I read that our ancestors never were like the primitive tribes that we occasionally come across these days, for if they were, they would have been locked into that kind of lifestyle, too.
Posted by at 6:38 PM on October 3
Does anyone have an example of North American Indians ever creating fire? I can’t think of one.
Posted by Whiteplight at 8:10 PM on October 3
Wow, is there ANYTHING that isn’t Whitey’s fault? Are we seriously supposed to believe that these proto-people can’t even count their fingers because of Whitey? How does a culture “forget” how to wear clothes or tell a story?
And how could an advanced agricultural civilization “forget” how to build any dwelling, including lean-to’s, while living surrounded by wood, vines, and thatch-worthy plants? Even animals can build dens! Whitey must have some powerful juju to curse those poor Yuquis to that degree.
I’ll bet their average IQs are significantly less than 50. African Pygmies have IQs of 54 (see Richard Lynn), but they build temporary huts arranged into small villages, and have music and legends. They are far more advanced than Yuqui, despite being the lowest-IQ people on earth (as yet tested).
Posted by Jill at 10:58 PM on October 3
The NA indians used slash and burn to create their farms. The early pioneers constantly complain that the indians were constantly setting fires. I presume they knew how to rub two sticks together.
Posted by flyingtiger at 12:50 AM on October 4
“Undoing 400 years of white wickedness may be a daunting task, but it pales in comparison with the prospect of turning a people with an achievement level somewhere between Homo Erectus and Neanderthal Man into productive 20th century citizens.”
Never fear. I’ll bet some group of kind-hearted idealists are already hatching a plan to bring them HERE.
Posted by at 3:19 AM on October 4
Somewhere I read that our ancestors never were like the primitive tribes that we occasionally come across these days, for if they were, they would have been locked into that kind of lifestyle, too.
……………
It only figures, when you come to think of it, that without the invention of the civilized arts of tanning leather, weaving cloth (which meant domesticating animals for wool), building shelters, methods of storing food, making containers to store or cook food (baskets and pottery), and the making of fire — not to mention planning ahead — our ancestors could not have survived the cold climate and long winters of Europe, especially through the ice ages. Europe is a COLD continent! Even the southern countries such as Italy and Spain can get VERY cold at night and in the winter. And they are all very mountainous with bitter temperatures at higher elevations.
For any tribe as utterly primitive as the above, lacking all the arts of civilization, even the most rudimentary, Europe would have been simply uninhabitable.
Posted by ghw at 3:38 AM on October 4
Seems that Stearman made Yuquis her lifetime project. I wasn’t able to find any other researcher interested in Yuqui tribe. Funnily enough, in this article:
http://media.www.centralfloridafuture.com/media/storage/paper174/news/2004/08/26/News/Wisdom.Of.The.Yuqui.Indians-705667.shtml
she sounds alternately like a good multiculturalist and a patronizing Kiplingian burden-carrying white man. Maybe these positions aren’t so distant as it may seem at the first sight…
The first example:
They are very technologically primitive people,” Stearman said. She cautions others on the use of the word “primitive,” though. “Anthropologists hesitate to use that word, because it has such a negative connotation. Socially and culturally, there are no primitive people,” she said.
The second example:
“My concern is how do you save a people like that without allowing them to be gobbled up by the outside world?” she asked.
Posted by EW at 5:01 AM on October 4
More colorful insight into a Yuqui recent community: they certainly advanced a bit from sheltering themselves by palm fronds…
http://www.pbase.com/beamsclan/image/101210116
Posted by EW at 5:08 AM on October 4
I do believe Stearman’s hypothetical narrative.
It does sound like they’re descended from refugees who lost everything in flight, took shelter from invaders in the dense wilderness, and had fought to survive upon the barest subsistence.
Indians have inhabited South America for 12,000 years. It’s difficult to believe a human group could have gone long without inventing shelter, and simple amenities like that, especially with the semi-civilized Incas as neighbors for thousands of years.
Posted by oqyt at 5:32 AM on October 4
I doubt the Yaqui are as backward as this article indicates they are.
http://www.everyculture.com/South-America/Yuqui-Religion-and-Expressive-Culture.html
Native Americans always easily outscore black Africans in IQ tests and intelligence. I wonder how much would they score if given a IQ test.
Posted by Jackson at 6:47 AM on October 4
Stearman says “they forgot how to swim”.
Yeah, I can see that. And I forgot how to ride a bike.
Posted by Proactive at 12:22 PM on October 4
“His conclusions are that the East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) have the highest mean IQ at 105. These are followed by the Europeans (IQ 100). Some way below these are the Inuit (Eskimos) (IQ 91), South East Asians (IQ 87), Native American Indians (IQ 87), Pacific Islanders (IQ 85), South Asians and North Africans (IQ 84). Well below these come the sub-Saharan Africans (IQ 67) followed by the Australian Aborigines (IQ 62). The least intelligent races are the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert together with the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests (IQ 54).” (From intro by Rushton)
From Richard Lynn- Race Differences in Intelligences (2006)
Posted by belle kerve at 1:43 PM on October 4
“I doubt the Yaqui are as backward as this article indicates they are.
http://www.everyculture.com/South-America/Yuqui-Religion-and-Expressive-Culture.html
Native Americans always easily outscore black Africans in IQ tests and intelligence. I wonder how much would they score if given a IQ test.”
Ahh, let me count the ways you are wrong..
First of all, anthropologists are routinely laughed at by archeologists because while Aches uses the facts in front of them , Anthros make it up as they go along to fit a socio-political viewpoint.
Next, they have the same religious beliefs that all aboriginal have—just like the Hmongs, as a matter of fact.
Lastly, the jungles are/were immense. Plenty of “undiscovered peoples” have been found in them—they never saw a white man in their lives and never saw the INcas either. No one did this to them. They simply never had the need to develop higher intelligence and thus never invented anything to make life easier—I mean, there was food all around them at all times—as long as their population remained small. Which it has.
Buying into leftists white guilt—a marxian concept, is just plain gullible and lacking in common sense.
Posted by Epublius at 3:53 PM on October 4
Jackson, the IQ tests don’t really measure all areas of intelligence and give a boost in some areas where maybe they shouldn’t. I’ll preface the rest of what I will say by noting that the weight of the visuo-spatial portion of IQ tests was adjusted to make it worth more, to make the scores of non-whites higher, as all non-white groups score higher on visuo-spatial portions of the tests than they do on verbal / analytical type questions. There were claims made that the switch was because visuospatial reasoning was more important for math, but that isn’t true, as the group with the highest average math scores (Ashkenazi Jews) has below average visuospatial ability. This disingenuous switch brought on by pressure from a loudmouth faction in the “psychology community” is how the average scores for E. Asians moved from a few points below whites to a few points above whites (we won’t get into Asian “structure” of intelligence being behind their lack of creativity here - that always seems to come up). The switch is how the scores for non-whites were all bumped up. This is where some of the remarks claiming that blacks and other non-whites are “gaining” on whites in terms of IQ come from. The gain actually comes from this switch in the weight of “importance” of visuo-spatial over verbal-analytical a few decades back. The advantage “native Americans” might have over blacks in IQ isn’t as great as tests indicate I would be willing to reckon. The Amerinds outscore blacks by a good portion on the visuo-spatial but probably not much at all on the verbal/analytical, and that’s one key to why both groups are burdened with trunkloads of social pathologies compared to whites. Just like most non-whites. To be blunt, you have two groups of intelligent humans, Caucasians (mainly but not all European Caucasians) and East Asians (mainly but not all Northern East Asians). There is quite a drop off after that. I should note that European whites are the only group whose averages between visuospatial and verbal-analytical tend to be “even”, all non-whites score higher on visuospatial tests than they do on verbal-analytical tests. Many in psychometry feel this is why whites tend to have higher levels of creativity, imagination what have you, but they tend to be afraid to remark on this as non-whites and their enablers come screeching with their tired howls of racism and more.
Either way, whites don’t need to be burdened with carrying primitive mestizos and africans on their backs. But this was the intent of the Immigration Act of 1965, and it is the intent of the people behind the lawyers who fight for illegal immigrants in our courts. To burden us, then wipe us out under a flood of low IQ immigrants, just as they are doing in Europe at the same time. Wake up. Do some research. Ignore the people who try to make fun of “conspiracies” or claim blacks or mestizos are in charge of the problem. They are covering up for the guilty parties.
Posted by at 4:32 PM on October 4
Boy do I doubt that there was a weighting change to weight visuospatial higher than verbal in recent years. Anyway, increased visuospatial weighting would not necessarily advantage Blacks over Whites in any way, and there isn’t much evidence that Black adults are gaining much on White adults anyway. East Asians have always been ahead of Whites on IQ. They don’t need any extra weighting.
Scores for all races in the US have been increasing dramatically in the past 80 years, in particular on abstract thinking, including verbal abstract thinking.
This group once acculturated probably has an IQ of ~87 or so like most Amerinds.
Deculturation seems to be a good hypothesis here. There are some groups over in Thailand and Laos that were thought to be really primitive and ancient but recently have been found to be agriculturalists who took off back to the forests to live the hunter-gatherer life.
Anthropology is generally a pretty solid social science. Most social sciences suffer from physics envy anyway. I’m not aware of much rivalry between anthros and archeos as they tend to work together anyway. Reading an older ethnology from the 1950’s is a journey into race realism. The physical features of the group will be described along with a matter of fact reckoning of the group’s culture, good, bad and ugly. I’m not sure if ethnologies are still allowed to be written this way, but at least until recently, this wasn’t a very PC science.
One thing you need to do when you do field work is to suspect judgment, otherwise you can’t work with the people.
I’ve worked for a while as a field anthropologist on a US government grant, so I know a bit about the field.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 7:39 PM on October 4
Native Americans always easily outscore black Africans in IQ tests and intelligence. I wonder how much would they score if given a IQ test.
Posted by Jackson at 6:47 AM on October 4
There’s a wide range of IQs in Africa, from 72 in tribes from Kenya/Tanzania to 54 for Pygmies. Although the known North/South American tribes outscore Africans, Yuquis were NOT included in Richard Lynn’s IQ studies.
If they are as primitive as advertised, I’d expect Yuquis to score lower than some, if not all, Africans - for a group of humans to not have music, legends, or even basic shelters is astonishing!
Posted by Jill at 9:36 PM on October 4
More colorful insight into a Yuqui recent community: they certainly advanced a bit from sheltering themselves by palm fronds… http://www.pbase.com/beamsclan/image/101210116
Posted by EW at 5:08 AM on October 4
Ah, yes…they’ve certainly mastered the art of littering.
Posted by at 9:49 PM on October 4
Stearman apparently is going to devote the rest of her life to the Yuqui tribe, the way Dian Fossey devoted hers to the mountain gorilla, and Jane Goodall to the chimpanzees of Gombe.
The Vatican is absolutely salivating at the thought of a new potential “Christian market” - the Yuqui aboriginal. I know, there’s only about 100 Yuqui left- but if the Vatican can squeeze money from them, why not?
Posted by Soprano Fan at 9:58 AM on October 5
know, there’s only about 100 Yuqui left- but if the Vatican can squeeze money from them, why not?
The Yuqui have money?
Posted by BW Sam at 2:13 PM on October 6
Robert Lindsay is wrong. There was a change in the way tests were weighted. This is mentioned in The Bell Curve, A Question of Intelligence and other books. It was done during the 1970’s. “Social Sciences” are at the root of many of our problems. Most of the pursuits of peoples in these sciences are not scientific. The IQ’s have not really been going up, it’s the skewing of tests and claims of “enlightened” ways of looking at varying results that give the illusion of rising scores or in some cases lead to flat out lies. Of course, Mr. Lindsay also tells us that blacks and mestizos are natural allies when all we see them do here in Southern California is attack each other. Constantly.
The “Flynn Effect”, the claim that IQ have been rising, has so far been shown to be nothing more than hope, a feel good story.
The SAT had portions re-weighted and scoring “re-centered”. Then the “essay” was added so that members of different groups could raise their scores, getting points if they work in the fact that they’re of an aggrieved group, i.e. black, latino, asian, muslim, jewish, gay, anyone with an axe to grind against the “majority” over something.
Posted by Live from Los Angeles at 9:12 PM on October 6