Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire–Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do by Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa Page A
Authors: Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa
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does completely determine human behavior after all! Mead was ecstatic. She left Samoa in April 1926 and published her âfindingsâ in Samoa in a book called Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928. The book immediately became an international bestseller and later a classic in cultural anthropology, and, among other things, formed the foundation of modern feminism. Feminists pointed to the âevidenceâ in the book to support their claim that, given different âgender socialization,â Western boys and girls could be completely different. Boys could be more like girls, and girls could be more like boys. So, in a sense, modern feminism was founded on the basis of a hoax.
More than sixty years later, on May 2, 1988, Faâapuaâa, who was then 86 years old, told a Samoan government official (who happened to be the son of Fofoa, who passed away in 1936) that everything she and her friend Fofoa told Margaret Mead about the sexual behavior of Samoan boys and girls on that fateful night of March 13, 1926, was untrue. It was a hoax. As it turns out, overwhelming ethnographic evidence by now shows that Samoan adolescents are no different from adolescents anywhere else in the world. Boys are sexually aggressive and active, and girls are sexually coy and shy.
The Gentle Tasaday
In 1968, biosocial anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon published the first edition of the anthropology classic Yanomamö: The Fierce People . 17 In the book, Chagnon describes the life of a tribe of South American Indians called the Yanomamö, living in the jungles of Brazil and Venezuela. The Yanomamö are so fierce and warlike that a third of adult males (and 7 percent of adult females) die in their constant battle. They are thought to be the fiercest people on earth.
Now that the Yanomamö were known to the world through Chagnonâs work, the cultural deterministsâthe intellectual descendants of Franz Boasâhad a task at hand. If human culture and behavior were infinitely variable, then there must exist the opposite of the Yanomamö somewhere on earth. If there were âthe fiercest people on earth,â then there must also be âthe gentlest people on earth.â Merely three years later, the cultural determinists got their wish.
In 1971, Manuel Elizalde, an official of the Marcos government in the Philippines, discovered an isolated tribe of twenty-six men, women, and children on the island of Mindanao. Called the Tasaday, they were said to lead a Stone Age life, without any knowledge of agriculture or even the existence of any other humans besides themselves. They had been completely cut off from the rest of the world for centuries. They were wearing leaves and living in a cave. Among other things, they were so peaceful ( so opposite of the Yanomamö ) that their language did not even contain any word for violence, conflict, or aggression. Two years later, a book describing their peaceful life was published with the predictable title The Gentle Tasaday . 18
With the help of the Marcos government, Elizalde tightly controlled media and scientific access to the Tasaday for fifteen years. As a result, not much more was known about them, and what was known about them by the rest of the world was officially sanctioned by Elizalde. In 1986, the Marcos government collapsed and Elizalde fled the country to Costa Rica. When two journalists went to the site of original discovery of the Tasaday, they found the cave empty. They found the Tasaday in a nearby village, wearing T-shirts and blue jeans. Upon further questioning, two of the original twenty-six Tasaday admitted to pretending to be Stone Age people upon Elizaldeâs insistence. It turns out that Marcos had instructed Elizalde to manufacture this band of peaceful Stone Age people in order to attract the worldâs attention to the Philippines but away from the brutal policies of his oppressive government. When a group of German journalists went to the cave
More than sixty years later, on May 2, 1988, Faâapuaâa, who was then 86 years old, told a Samoan government official (who happened to be the son of Fofoa, who passed away in 1936) that everything she and her friend Fofoa told Margaret Mead about the sexual behavior of Samoan boys and girls on that fateful night of March 13, 1926, was untrue. It was a hoax. As it turns out, overwhelming ethnographic evidence by now shows that Samoan adolescents are no different from adolescents anywhere else in the world. Boys are sexually aggressive and active, and girls are sexually coy and shy.
The Gentle Tasaday
In 1968, biosocial anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon published the first edition of the anthropology classic Yanomamö: The Fierce People . 17 In the book, Chagnon describes the life of a tribe of South American Indians called the Yanomamö, living in the jungles of Brazil and Venezuela. The Yanomamö are so fierce and warlike that a third of adult males (and 7 percent of adult females) die in their constant battle. They are thought to be the fiercest people on earth.
Now that the Yanomamö were known to the world through Chagnonâs work, the cultural deterministsâthe intellectual descendants of Franz Boasâhad a task at hand. If human culture and behavior were infinitely variable, then there must exist the opposite of the Yanomamö somewhere on earth. If there were âthe fiercest people on earth,â then there must also be âthe gentlest people on earth.â Merely three years later, the cultural determinists got their wish.
In 1971, Manuel Elizalde, an official of the Marcos government in the Philippines, discovered an isolated tribe of twenty-six men, women, and children on the island of Mindanao. Called the Tasaday, they were said to lead a Stone Age life, without any knowledge of agriculture or even the existence of any other humans besides themselves. They had been completely cut off from the rest of the world for centuries. They were wearing leaves and living in a cave. Among other things, they were so peaceful ( so opposite of the Yanomamö ) that their language did not even contain any word for violence, conflict, or aggression. Two years later, a book describing their peaceful life was published with the predictable title The Gentle Tasaday . 18
With the help of the Marcos government, Elizalde tightly controlled media and scientific access to the Tasaday for fifteen years. As a result, not much more was known about them, and what was known about them by the rest of the world was officially sanctioned by Elizalde. In 1986, the Marcos government collapsed and Elizalde fled the country to Costa Rica. When two journalists went to the site of original discovery of the Tasaday, they found the cave empty. They found the Tasaday in a nearby village, wearing T-shirts and blue jeans. Upon further questioning, two of the original twenty-six Tasaday admitted to pretending to be Stone Age people upon Elizaldeâs insistence. It turns out that Marcos had instructed Elizalde to manufacture this band of peaceful Stone Age people in order to attract the worldâs attention to the Philippines but away from the brutal policies of his oppressive government. When a group of German journalists went to the cave
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