Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
Reading an older article on this tribe. Quite amazing stuff.
They can’t count. They basically only have three words for quantity.
They don’t have any words for colors only lighter and darker.
They have no concept of time beyond their own lives. No creation myths and no god. They do believe in spirits but not exactly in the way we think of them. A spirit can be real world things like animals in the jungle.
And they have no art of any kind which is too bad because their language can be whistled or hummed. Imagine the profound level creativity a native song/poem could have in the language. They use the whistling aspect when hunting.
The Tribe
 |
OK.......how many high schoolers does this remind you of? Nevermind the gonch he is wearing.
The debate amongst linguists about the absence of all numbers in the Pirahã language broke out after Peter Gordon, a psycholinguist at New York's Columbia University, visited the Pirahãs and tested their mathematical abilities. For example, they were asked to repeat patterns created with between one and 10 small batteries. Or they were to remember whether Gordon had placed three or eight nuts in a can.
The results, published in Science magazine, were astonishing. The Pirahãs simply don't get the concept of numbers. His study, Gordon says, shows that "a people without terms for numbers doesn't develop the ability to determine exact numbers."