This unique collection demonstrates not merely the engraving of a single geometric pattern but the development of a graphic tradition and the complex use of symbols to mediate social interactions. The large number of marked pieces shows that there were rules for composing designs but room within the rules to allow for individual and/or group preferences. In effect there were a number, albeit a limited number, of alternative patterns that could be transferred to ostrich eggs, transforming them from ordinary items into specially and uniquely marked ostrich eggshells.

They slept on even when someone yelled out in anger or fright during a nightmare, or when a father awakened from a mournful dream of a child who had died and cried out his anguish, though the death might have happened years ago (which was what I had heard that first night). Meanwhile someone would get up to tend a fire whose warmth was needed by the family sleeping naked in their hammocks; someone else might walk outside to urinate, though not too far outside, because one didn’t venture far from the shapono at night.

In the middle of the night a shaman might decide he wanted to chant. He’d take his drugs, his conduit to the world of the hekura, the spirits. At that hour no one was up to blow them into his nose, so he’d inhale the epene powder like snuff from his hand, then stand up and chant for an hour or two, exactly as he would during the daytime.

At the beginning I was constantly cranky. The Yanomama have the ability to wake up and go back to sleep in a minute. I did not. When something got me up, I was up. I’d lie in the hammock for in hour trying to get back to sleep among all the nighttime noises in the shapono. Eventually I got used to this, too. Like the Yanomama, I’d spend eleven hours in my hammock at night to get seven or eight hours of actual sleep.

Already they left and arrived there.
He [Kunájwerri] made whistles from Cecropia wood for them.
He said to them, “You are going to dance for me in the middle of the garden.”
“Okay,” they [Iñápirríkuli and his brothers] said, “light the fire while we dance for you.”
He went about setting the fire. He walked about rapidly setting the fire. He finished when he had come full circle and encountered the fire.
He looked towards the boys. There was no place for them to survive. They were finished.
They stayed there and danced. “he-he-he.” [sound of the whistles]
The fire came towards were the boys were dancing, very close.
“Let’s go.”
Then they spit into their whistles.
They threw their whistles on the ground.
Already they left.
They entered in the ground and came out in the forest.
Thus began the leafcutter ants that live to this day.
Kunájwerri saw that the fire had reached the place where they were dancing.
“Now I’ve got them. They have already burned up.”
“I will return and say to their aunt, ‘I warned them but they didn’t pay any attention.’ That’s what I’ll say to her.”
He stood up to see the fire. Already they were burning up.
“Now their guts are going to explode.”
And they burst open. He heard “too”.
“Now, yes, their guts have burst open. There is one more left.”
After a minute he heard “too” once again. That was all.
“Now I will return.”
He returned close to a stream.
He heard the boys playing there.
Then he said, “Who could this be. Could it be people?”
He went slowly. When he arrived he saw it was indeed them.
They looked at Kunájwerri. “Eh, you’ve returned.”
“Yes,” he said.
“We already returned ahead of you. It was very hot for us,” they told him.
He became very angry with them.
They returned and arrived home.

The creation of forest islands, or Apete, demonstrates to what extent the Kayapo can alter and manage ecosystems to increase biological diversity. Apete begin as small mounds of vegetation, about one to two meters round, created by ant nests in open areas in the field. Slight depressions are usually picked out because they are more likely to retain moisture. Seeds or seedlings are planted in these piles of organic material. The Apete are usually formed in August and September, during the first rains of the wet season, and then nurtured by the Indians as they pass along the savannah trails. As Apete grow, they begin to look like up-turned hats, with higher vegetation in the centre and lower herbs growing in the shaded borders. The Indians usually cut down the highest trees in the centre to create a donut-hole centre that allows the light into older Apete. Thus a full-grown Apete has an architecture that creates zones that vary in shade, light and humidity. These islands become important sources of medicinal and edible plants, as well as places of rest. Palms, which have a variety of uses, prominently figure in Apete, as do shade trees. Even vines that produce drinkable water are transplanted here. Apete look so "natural", however, that until recently scientists in fact did not recognise them as human artefacts. According to informants, of a total of 120 species inventoried in ten Apete, about 75 percent could have been planted. Such ecological engineering requires detailed knowledge of soil fertility, micro-climatic variations, and species niches, as well as the interrelationships among species that are introduced into these human-made communities. ]]> http://socialfiction.org "From the enemy's point of view: humanity and divinity in an Amazonian society" by Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro. ]]> http://socialfiction.org Kayapó gardening

Another of the major misconceptions about slash-and-burn agriculture is that fields are abandoned to fallow after two or three years because the soil loses its fertility, and weeds and insects take over. Loss of fertility of the soil, however, is not the factor that determines that agriculture takes a shifting pattern.

Soil analyses shows that the soils are not exhausted after two or even three years. Furthermore, soils are totally rejuvenated after 10-12 years of fallow. Yet no Kayapó field in Gorotire in replanted in less than 15-20 years. Kayapó Field plots in most cases are scattered three to four hours' journey away from the village, although suitable, adequately fallowed, old plots might be only 15-20 minutes away. The Kayapó ordinarily seek to minimize effort and work so that this seems to be a great inconsistency in their cultural pattern.

The Kayapó recognize that the high forest is relatively sparse in animal life, while forest clearing furnish habitat for smaller leafy and bushy plants that attract wildlife. They know that leaving 'abandoned' fields to the natural reforestation sequence artificially creates domains that stimulate wildlife populations. They also know that the more widely their 'abandoned' fields are dispersed, the greater the area available to attract game - and the easier the hunting. Dispersed fields also naturally limit viral, fungal, and insect crop pests.

This sensitivity to forest succession explains why the Kayapó are willing to let close-by old fields remain fallow. Although it might be easier to replant nearby fields more frequently, it would just mean having to go further away to hunt for game and for the essential gathered products from the secondary forest.

The following qoute deals with 'nomadic agriculture'.

Although ‘settled’ for several decades now, the Kayapó have not deserted their semi-nomadic habits entirely. They spend several months each year in the Brazil nut groves living in communal houses; go on frequent collecting and hunting trips; and before major festivals make two- or three-week treks to acquire ceremonial game and feathers.

The Kayapó have never left everything on their journeys to chance, however, but have developed an interesting ‘nomadic agriculture’, which they continue to use today.

While routinely scavenging about the forest, the Indians gather dozens of plants, carry them back to the forest campsites or trails, and replant them in natural forest clearings. The plants include several types of wild manioc, three varieties of wild yams, a type of bush bean, and three or more wild varieties of kupa.

These forest fields are always located near streams, which generally guarantee a stand of trees. Even in the savanna, where patches of forest are often few and far between, there are areas where collected plants have been replanted to form food depots.

The Kayapó once maintained an extensive system of interlacing trails linking all their vast territory. Most of these ancient trails are now abandoned, but not all, and the Kayapó are still masters of the forest and savanna and travel considerable distances.

I once traveled for five days with four Kayapó man on long-abandoned trails to an ancient village site. Although the trails were overgrown and difficult to follow, they had been used so much that in some places they were etched six inches into the hard earth. Each night we would stop at a stream in some spot flattened and hardened by years of use. The men would slip off into the forest and soon return with a variety of roots, tubers, stalks and fruits. Foods were readily acquired even on parts of the trail known to have been abandoned 40 years before.

It was nearly two months after I began my life with the Kayapó that I realized that not all collected roots, seeds and cuttings ended up in stomachs. For example, a Kayapó would find it natural to replant a portion of what he had foraged near where he defecated.

]]> http://socialfiction.org From Indigenous struggle at the heart of Brazil.]]> http://socialfiction.org http://socialfiction.org Hans Staden Brazilian painter Oswald de Andrade penned the 1928 Cannibal Manifesto, the flagship document for the Brazilian Cannibalist movement. Here it is:

Cannibal Manifesto

Only Cannibalism unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.

The unique law of the world. The disguised expression of all individualisms, all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties.

Tupi or not tupi that is the question.

Against all catechisms. And against the mother of the Gracos.

I am only interested in what’s not mine. The law of men. The law of the cannibal.

We are tired of all those suspicious Catholic husbands in plays. Freud finished off the enigma of woman and the other recent psychological seers.

What dominated over truth was clothing, an impermeable layer between the interior world and the exterior world. Reaction against people in clothes. The American cinema will tell us about this.

Sons of the sun, mother of living creatures. Fiercely met and loved, with all the hypocrisy of longing: importation, exchange, and tourists. In the country of the big snake.

It’s because we never had grammatical structures or collections of old vegetables. And we never knew urban from suburban, frontier country from continental. Lazy on the world map of Brazil.

One participating consciousness, one religious rhythm.

Against all the importers of canned conscience. For the palpable existence of life. And let Levy-Bruhl go study prelogical mentality.

We want the Cariba Revolution. Bigger than the French Revolution. For the unification of all the efficient revolutions for the sake of human beings. Without us, Europe would not even have had its paltry declaration of the rights of men.

The golden age proclaimed by America. The golden age. And all the girls.

Filiation. The contact with the Brazilian Cariba Indians. Ou Villegaignon print terre. Montaigne. Natural man. Rousseau. From the French Revolution to Romanticism, to the Bolshevik Revolution, to the Surrealist Revolution and the technological barbarity of Keyserling. We’re moving right along.

We were never baptized. We live with the right to be asleep. We had Christ born in Bahia. Or in Belem do Pata.

But for ourselves, we never admitted the birth of logic.

Against Father Vieira, the Priest. Who made our first loan, to get a commission. The illiterate king told him: put this on paper but without too much talk. So the loan was made. Brazilian sugar was accounted for. Father Vieira left the money in Portugal and just brought us the talk.

The spirit refuses to conceive spirit without body. Anthropomorphism. Necessity of cannibalistic vaccine. For proper balance against the religions of the meridian. And exterior inquisitions.

We can only be present to the hearing world.

We had the right codification of vengeance. The codified science of Magic. Cannibalism. For the permanent transformation of taboo into totem.

Against the reversible world and objectified ideas. Made into cadavers. The halt of dynamic thinking. The individual a victim of the system. Source of classic injustices. Of romantic injustices. And the forgetfulness of interior conquests.

Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays.

Cariba instinct.

Death and life of hypotheses. From the equation I coming from the Cosmos to the axiom Cosmos coming from the I. Subsistence. Knowledge. Cannibalism.

Against the vegetable elites. In communication with solitude.

We were never baptized. We had the Carnival. The Indian dressed as a Senator of the Empire. Acting the part of Pitt. Or playing in the operas of Alencar with many good Portuguese feelings.

We already had communism. We already had a surrealist language. The golden age.

Catiti Catiti
Imara Notia
Notia Imara
Ipeju*

Magic and life. We had relations and distribution of fiscal property, moral property, and honorific property. And we knew how to transport mystery and death with the help of a few grammatical forms.

I asked a man what was Right. He answered me that it was the assurance of the full exercise of possibilities. That man was called Galli Mathias. I ate him.

The only place there is no determinism is where there is mystery. But what has that to do with us?

Against the stories of men that begin in Cape Finisterre. The world without dates. Without rubrics. Without Napoleon. Without Caesar.

The fixation of progress by means of catalogues and television sets. Only with machinery. And blood transfusions.

Against antagonistic sublimations brought over in sailing ships.

Against the truth of the poor missionaries, defined through the wisdom of a cannibal, the Viscount of Cairo – It is a lie repeated many times.

But no crusaders came to us. They were fugitives from a civilization that we are eating up, because we are strong and as vindictive as the land turtles.

Only God is the conscience of the Uncreated Universe, Guaraci is the mother of all living creatures. Jaci is the mother of vegetables.

We never had any speculation. But we believed in divination. We had Politics, that is, the science of distribution. And a socio-planetary system.

Migrations. The flight from tedious states. Against urban scleroses. Against Conservatives and speculative boredom.

From William James and Voronoff. Transfiguration of taboo into totem. Cannibalism.

The pater familias is the creation of the stork fable: a real ignorance of things, a tale of imagination and a feeling of authority in front of curious crowds.

We have to start from a profound atheism in order to reach the idea of God. But the Cariba did not have to make anything precise. Because they had Guaraci.

The created object reacts like the Fallen Angel. Ever since, Moses has been wandering about. What is that to us?

Before two Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil discovered happiness.

Against the Indian de tocheiro. The Indian son of Mary, the godson of Catherine of Médicis and the son-in-law of Don Antonio de Mariz.

Happiness is the real proof.

No Pindorama matriarchy.

Against Memory the source of habit. Renewed for personal experience.

We are concrete. We take account of ideas, we react, we burn people in the public squares. We suppress ideas and other kinds of paralysis. Through screenplays. To believe in our signs, to believe in our instruments and our stars.

Against Goethe, against the mother of the Gracos, and the Court of Don Juan VI.

Happiness is the real proof.

The struggle between what we might call the Uncreated and the Created – illustrated by the permanent contradiction of man and his taboo. Daily love and the capitalist modus vivendi. Cannibalism. Absorption of the sacred enemy. To transform him into a totem. The human adventure. Earthly finality. However, only the pure elite manage to realize carnal cannibalism within, some sense of life, avoiding all the evils Freud identified, those religious evils. What yields nothing is a sublimation of the sexual instinct. It is a thermometric scale of cannibalist instinct. Once carnal, it turns elective and creates friendship. Affectivity, or love. Speculative, science. It deviates and transfers. We arrive at utter vilification. In base cannibalism, our baptized sins agglomerate – envy, usury, calumny, or murder. A plague from the so-called cultured and Christianized, it’s what we are acting against. Cannibals.

Against Anchieta singing the eleven thousand virgins in the land of Iracema – the patriarch Joa Ramalho the founder of Sao Paulo.

Our independence was never proclaimed. A typical phrase of Don Juan VI – My son, put this crown on your head, before some adventurer does it! We expel the dynasty. We have to get rid of the Braganza spirit, the ordinations and snuff of Maria da Fonte.

Against social reality, dressed and oppressive, defined by Freud – in reality we are complex, we are crazy, we are prostitutes and without prisons of the Pindorama matriarchy.


Note: *"The New Moon, or the Lua Nova, blows in Everyman remembrances of me" from The Savages, by Couto Magalhaes. ]]> http://socialfiction.org Earth House Hold the Real Work shows Snyder in relaxed form, talking in some debt about many point about his thinking and moments in his development that are elsewhere left silent or implicit. I admire the man for his intelligence and self-reliance and from this book you get an even better sense of his unwavering commitment to his self-proclaimed task: to speak out for wildness.
Having read this book I am also a little bit sad because now I have almost exhausted Snyder's non-fiction oeuvre. ]]> http://socialfiction.org Deforesting the earth: from prehistory to global crisis by Michael Williams

An important factor in the domestication process was defecation. The seeds of sweet-corn, tomatoes, lemons, cucumbers, and many more edible plants, as well as fruits of shrubs and trees, can pass intact through the human as well as the animal gut (it may even enhance their reproductive vigour), and can be subsequently dispersed and reproduced. In the case of humans the peripheral latrine areas common to virtually all societies would become new gardens in time.

]]> http://socialfiction.org Are mantras older than language? Are these the oldest notable utterances in current use?? Is ritual the origin of syntax??? Are mantras related (or equivalent?) to bird song???? The ideas are from Frits Staal, the connections and files were delivered by Twitter contacts Fadareu and Tripzilch.

[I]t is not obvious that language is the defining characteristic of man. It is equally consistent with the scanty evidence on man's early activities that language is a relatively recent acquisition in man's biological evolution. In either case, if mantras are prior to language, it should be possible to find them in earlier stages of evolution, either in early man or elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Since the sounds of early man are no longer audible and our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates, have not developed much in the way of vocalization, it may be necessary to look further afield. This is not uncommon in the study of biological evolution. To find parallels to certain features of social organization in man, for example, one may have to turn to insects, who represent a phase of biological evolution entirely different from the mammalian phase to which we ourselves belong. Similarly, to find parallels to human music, one should study whales, frogs, insects, and especially birds. And so it may be rewarding to consider birds and bird songs if one searches for parallels to mantras.

]]> http://socialfiction.org writes Gustaaf Verswijver:

Producing the large quantity of high-calorie foods needed by the population is primarily a female task. Women are responsible for managing the swiddens, usually cultivated within a radius of four to six kilometres around the village. Each family possesses its own swiddens containing staple crops such as sweet potato, maize, sugar cane, bananas and manioc, extremely rich in calories. Some tropical fruits, as well as cotton and tobacco, are also planted.

The Kayapó are demanding in the choice of potentially fertile lands: the ideal oasis is a tract of forest without overly dense vegetation, situated at the foot of a hill close to a river. The Kayapó distinguish between various types of terrain and forests. Selecting a convenient site for a new village or a new swidden is not a decision to be rushed into. Specialists carefully examine the soil colour and composition. The existing vegetation is likewise taken into consideration.

The men have the arduous task of cutting down the trees to clear the swiddens. The trees are felled at the start of the dry season (May) and remain there for some months until the rainy season. The nature of the soil poses a considerable problem in the tropical rainforest due to the extremely low concentration of minerals. Hence, as October approaches, the Kayapó burn the trees whose timber has had by now enough time to dry. The minerals contained in the wood remain in the ashes, forming a layer that acts as a fertilizer. After burning, the women start planting. Many varieties of crops are planted in concentric circles. This mixed culture presents a number of advantages; for example, large-leafed plants protect the soil from torrential rain and drying, while tall plants offer protection from the scalding sun. Some plants also help combat insects. Medicinal plants are usually located on the periphery of the swidden. Many of these plants produce a nectar that attracts a particular species of aggressive ant, natural enemies of phytophagic insects. Although it may appear disordered, the Kayapó swidden is organized in accordance with a highly structured logic.

The women go to the swiddens every day to collect the crops as needed. A Kayapó woman's life is somewhat monotonous. But a few times during the year, generally during the dry season, small groups of women go to the forest to gather wild fruits and palm oil. The shortest trips last a couple of says, the longer trips a week. The women never separate completely from the village, remaining within a radius of 30 km, the territory with which they are more familiar and that is continually crossed by hunters.

]]> http://socialfiction.org 'Perspectives on garden histories' by Michel Conan. The picture shows a Yanomami working his garden.

Many anthropologists working in the Amazon Basin have been struck by the resemblance between gardens and the forest. Fifteen months after the forest has been cleared, Achuar gardens have reached their grown-up appearance, and their three-tiered levels of foliage reproduce on a smaller scale and in rather orderly fashion the surrounding forest. Larger-leafed banana trees and papaya trees provide the top cover, cassava plants contribute the larger part of the second cover that prevents the earth from being washed out by rain, and different vegetables and smaller plants provide ground cover. Thus gardens appear as a cultural imitation of the natural forest. One of the most arresting results of the method used by Descola is that it enabled him to show that this is only true to the eye of a Western observer. Actually for the Achuar, the forest is just another garden that is cared for by the spirits who are almost human (they take care of the wild animals as humans do to their own tame animals, and they hunt them in order to eat them as humans do their poultry). He has shown that nature is organized according to social relationships that are identical to social relationships within the household. Nature is perceived along a pattern derived from household life in Achuar society. It turns out that social relationships within their society provide the models for describing nature, rather than nature providing the model for social relationships and artifacts as we would have it.

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