Brazil's PIRAHÃ Tribe

[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

[worth]

Wow, great link, thanks for sharing. Very interesting and i'll have to read more about them.

Amazing how a tribe on our own planet can be so different...think about intelligent life that didn't evolve on this planet and how even more extremely different they would be.

[Wookie]

Originally Posted by worth

Wow, great link, thanks for sharing. Very interesting and i'll have to read more about them.

Amazing how a tribe on our own planet can be so different...think about intelligent life that didn't evolve on this planet and how even more extremely different they would be.

Dude musta picked up his lowrider ginch from somewhere? Surely he's not the OG

[mykalberta]

The white dude in the picture just needs to face facts - YOUR BALD, live with it.

The half moon rising look is not a good look.

[GoinAllTheWay]

I love that chick workin it in the background. She is feeling especialy pretty today in her recently woven new dress.

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

I love that chick workin it in the background. She is feeling especialy pretty today in her recently woven new dress.

oh ya...and shes hot fo you!

[RougeUnderoos]

How primitive can this tribe be? That guy is wearing hiking boots for crying out loud. Cool old skool bow though.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

I love that chick workin it in the background. She is feeling especialy pretty today in her recently woven new dress.

I think I threw up in my mouth.

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

How primitive can this tribe be? That guy is wearing hiking boots for crying out loud. Cool old skool bow though.

Um...the boots are on the professor who visited the tribe!

[worth]

Well somewhere in the article it said that they have contact with others outside their tribe. So it is possible the clothes came from outside sources...or that even the scientist brought the clothes in for them.

[JohnnyB]

They've made a lot of news over the past few years. In fact, I was pretty sure I'd read about them previously on CP.

Anyways, they're definitely fascinating. I'd like to see a lot more information and language samples though. I haven't actually seen any examples of analyses of their language.

[HOZ]

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."