anthropology – Helian Unbound

Napoleon Chagnon and Robert Ardrey

History. You don’t know the half of it. Not, at least, unless you have the time and patience to do a little serious digging through the source material on your own. A good percentage of the so called works of history that have appeared in the last 50 years have been written by journalists. Typically, these take the form of moral homilies in which the author takes great care to insure the reader can tell the good guys from the bad guys. They are filled with wooden caricatures, crude simplifications, pious observations, and are almost uniformly worthless. The roles are periodically reversed. For example, Coolidge, universally execrated by all right-thinking intellectuals in the 1930’s, has just been stood upright again in a new biographical interpretation by Amity Shlaes. Charles Rappleye, one of my personal favorites among the current crop of historians, documents how Robert Morris morphed from good guy to bad guy back to good guy again in the fascinating epilogue to his biography of the great financier of our War of Independence.

Occasionally, major historical figures don’t fit into anyone’s version of the way things were supposed to be. In that case, they just disappear. Robert Ardrey is a remarkable instance of this form of collective historical amnesia. Ardrey was, by far, the most effective opponent of the Blank Slate. For those unfamiliar with the term, the Blank Slate was an ideologically induced malady that enforced a rigid orthodoxy in the behavioral sciences for several decades. According to that orthodoxy, there was no such thing as human nature, or, if there was, it was insignificant. The Blank Slate was bound to seem ridiculous to anyone with an ounce of common sense. In a series of four books, beginning with African Genesis in 1961 and ending with The Hunting Hypothesis in 1976, Ardrey pointed out exactly why it was ridiculous, and what motivated its adherents to maintain the charade in spite of the fact. They have been fighting a furious rearguard action ever since. It has been futile. Ardrey broke the spell. The Blank Slate Humpty Dumpty was smashed for good.

Enter Napoleon Chagnon. The great cultural anthropologist has just published his Noble Savages, in which he recounts his experiences among the Yanomamö of South America. Over the years, he, too, has fallen afoul of the Blank Slaters for telling the truth instead of adjusting his observations to conform with their ideological never never land. He, too, has been the victim of their vicious ad hominem attacks. One would think he would revere Ardrey as a fellow sufferer at the hands of the same pious ideologues. If so, however, one would think wrong. Chagnon mentions Ardrey only once, in the context of a discussion of his own early run-ins with the Blank Slaters, as follows:

My field research and analytical approach were part of what anthropologist Robin Fox and sociologist Lionel Tiger referred to as the “zoological perspective” in the social sciences, a reawakening of interest in man’s evolved nature as distinct from his purely cultural nature.

For the record, Fox and Tiger were unknowns as far as the “reawakening in man’s evolved nature as distinct from his purely cultural nature” is concerned until they published The Imperial Animal in 1971. By that time, Ardrey had published all but the last of his books. Konrad Lorenz had also published his On Aggression in 1966, five years earlier. The Imperial Animal was an afterthought, published long after the cat was already out of the bag. At the time it appeared, it impressed me as shallow and lacking the intellectual insight needed to grasp the ideological reasons for the emergence of the Blank Slate orthodoxy. Chagnon continues,

I hadn’t fully realized in the late 1960s that the mere suggestion that Homo sapiens had any kind of “nature” except a “cultural nature” caused most cultural anthropologists to bristle. What Tiger and Fox – and a small but growing number of scientific anthropologists – were interested in was the question of how precisely evolution by natural selection – Darwin’s theory of evolution – affected Homo sapiens socially, behaviorally, and psychologically.

Long-term studies of nonhuman primates and primate social organizations were affecting cultural anthropology. Many earlier anthropological “truths” were beginning to crumble, such as claims that Homo sapiens alone among animals shared food, made tools, or cooperated with other members of the group who were genetically closely related. More generally, findings from the field of ethology and animal behavior were beginning to work their way into the literature of anthropology. Predictably, cultural anthropologists began to resist these trends, often by denigrating the academics who were taking the first steps in that direction or by attempting to discredit the emerging contributions by criticizing the most sensational work, often by nonexperts (for example, Robert Ardrey’s African Genesis).

So much for Robert Ardrey. His shade should smile. Chagnon’s rebuke of “sensationalism” is positively benign compared to Steven Pinker’s declaration that Ardrey was “totally and utterly wrong” in his book, The Blank Slate. Both charges, however, are equally ridiculous. Pinker’s “totally and utterly wrong” was taken on hearsay from Richard Dawkins, who based the charge on, of all things, Ardrey’s kind words about group selection. The idea that the Blank Slaters attacked Ardrey as an easy target because of his “sensationalism” is also nonsense. By their own account, they attacked him because he was their most influential and effective opponent, and continued as such from the time he published African Genesis at least until the appearance of E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology in 1976. Why the dismissive attitude? Call it academic tribalism. The fact that the “nonexpert” Ardrey had been right, and virtually all the “experts” of his time wrong, has always been a bitter pill for today’s “experts” to swallow. It is a lasting insult to their amour propre. They have been casting about trying to prop up one of their own as the “true” dragon slayer of the Blank Slate ever since. Until recently, the knight of choice has been E. O. Wilson, whose Sociobiology, another afterthought that appeared a good 15 years after African Genesis, was supposedly the “seminal work” of today’s evolutionary psychology. Alas, to the bitter disappointment of the tribe, Wilson, too, just embraced the group selection heresy that made Ardrey “totally and utterly wrong” in his latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth. No doubt it will now be necessary to find a new “father of evolutionary psychology.” In my humble opinion, the choice of Tiger and Fox would be in poor taste. Surely the tribe can do better.

And what of Ardrey? He was certainly sensational enough. How could he not be? After all, a man whose reputation had been gained as a playwright thoroughly debunking all the “experts” in anthropology and the rest of the behavioral sciences was bound to be sensational. He was a man of many hypotheses. Anyone trolling through his work today would have no trouble finding other reasons to triumphantly declare him “totally and utterly wrong.” However, let’s look at the record of the most important of those hypotheses, many of which had been posed by other forgotten men long before Ardrey.

The fact that human nature exists and is important: Ardrey 1, experts 0

The fact that hunting became important early in human evolution: Ardrey 1, experts 0

The fact that humans tend to perceive others in terms of ingroups and outgroups: Ardrey 1, experts 0

Understanding of the ideological origin of the Blank Slate: Ardrey 1, experts 0

Realization that the behavioral traits we associate with morality are shared with animals: Ardrey 1, experts 0

The list goes on. Ardrey set forth these hypotheses in the context of what the Blank Slaters themselves praised as masterful reviews of the relevant work in anthropology and animal ethology at the time. See for example, the essays by Geoffrey Gorer that appeared in Man and Aggression, a Blank Slater manifesto published in 1968. And yet, far from being celebrated as a great man who did more than any other to debunk what is arguably one of the most damaging lies ever foisted on mankind, Ardrey is forgotten. As George Orwell once said, “He who controls the present controls the past.” The academics control the message, and Ardrey is dead. They have dropped him down the memory hole. Such is history. As I mentioned above, you don’t know the half of it.

Carroll Quigley’s Book Review: “Scientific Criticism” in the Heyday of the Blank Slate

The importance of self-understanding seems self-evident. Our species is quite capable of committing suicide. If we can learn why it is we tend to behave in some ways and not in others, our chances of avoiding that fate will be much improved. That’s why it’s a matter of no small concern that the behavioral sciences were hijacked over a period of several decades by ideological zealots, who succeeded in imposing the false orthodoxy that human nature doesn’t matter; the so-called Blank Slate. In spite of the obvious significance of these events, very little effort has been devoted to understanding why and how they happened, and how they might be prevented from happening again. I can think of nothing more important for the behavioral sciences to study and understand than the reasons for their own ideologically induced collapse. So far, however, very little is happening along those lines. Anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists are cheerfully churning out books and papers about evolved human nature as if the whole episode never happened, in spite of the fact that much of it took place within living memory.

In fact, the manner in which the false orthodoxy was imposed had nothing to do with science. It was accomplished by people who were, for all practical purposes, religious zealots, using the time-tested methods that have always been used to impose orthodoxy; vilification, psychological terrorism, ad hominem attacks, and self-righteous posing. The only difference between the zealots of the Blank Slate and more traditional religious fanatics was the secular rather than spiritual nature of the gods they served.

I recently ran across an interesting example of genre fossilized on the Internet. It took the form of an attack on Robert Ardrey, bête noir of the Blank Slaters of his day, and the most effective and influential opponent they ever had to deal with. It was couched in the form of a book review written by one Carroll Quigley, a professor of history at Georgetown. The work in question was Ardrey’s The Social Contract, and all the usual gambits are there; the assumption of superior scientific gravitas, the dismissal of opponents as “pop psychologists,” the copious invention of strawmen, topped off with moralistic posing and denunciations of the “sins” of the unbelievers.

Quigley begins with his version of the “pop psychology” canard:

…in this book there is no more science than there is in a comic strip. As an entertainer, Ardrey is the Scheherazade of the present day, telling tales about strange animals, in far off places and in remote times, with every assurance that they are true, but, like the Arabian Nights, it is foolish to worry about how true they are, they are so unbelievable and so glib.

That would have been news to the people whose work Ardrey quoted. They were usually chosen from among the most well-known and respected researchers of their day, who described the behavior of animals that, far from being far off or remote, were often quite common. Geoffrey Gorer, himself a Blank Slater, but one who managed to preserve some semblance of common decency, observed that,

Almost without question, Robert Ardrey is today the most influential writer in English dealing with the innate or instinctive attributes of human nature, and the most skilled populariser of the findings of paleo-anthropologists, ethologists, and biological experimenters… He is a skilled writer, with a lively command of English prose, a pretty turn of wit, and a dramatist’s skill in exposition; he is also a good reporter, with the reporter’s eye for the significant detail, the striking visual impression. He has taken a look at nearly all the current work in Africa of paleo-anthropologists and ethologists; time and again, a couple of his paragraphs can make vivid a site, such as the Olduvai Gorge, which has been merely a name in a hundred articles.

…he does not distort his authorities beyond what is inevitable in any selection and condensation… even those familiar with most of the literature are likely to find descriptions of research they had hitherto ignored, particularly in The Territorial Imperative, with its bibliography of 245 items.

It’s not clear why Quigley thought he was qualified to lecture Ardrey on animal behavior in the first place. He certainly had no claim to expertise in the field. However, he so distorted what Ardrey had to say on the subject that his expertise was irrelevant in any case. For example, he writes,

It is true that Ardrey has read a great deal about animal behavior, but he never seems to grasp what it all means, and his biases prevent him from seeing what is really there. For example, he gives the impression that he is constantly exploring Africa, watching lions with George Schaller, or chatting with the world’s greatest experts about elephants. He tells us that he “made a general survey of predatory communities” in Africa in 1968, but his ignorance of lions is so great that he misunderstands most of what he sees, reads, or is told. For example, one afternoon, Ardrey and his wife roused a lioness “a few hundred yards” from a herd of browsing impala. Two of the impala came over to see the lioness as it sought another sleeping place, while the others “never for a moment stopped eating.” Ardrey was amazed at this, but decided that he could not say that the impala were “suicidal” since the lioness was so sleepy. Then he adds, “Nevertheless, one can state in very nearly mathematical terms the survival value of approaching or fleeing the presence of a lion of unknown antagonism if you are an impala.”

This is typical of the ponderous way Ardrey covers his ignorance. Despite his claims of intimacy with Schaller, who studied lions in Africa over three years, 1966-1969, Ardrey apparently does not know that killing by a lion (1) is not motivated by “antagonism”; (2) almost never takes place in the middle of the day; (3) is never directed at an animal which is looking at the lion; and (4) the attack never is made from a distance of over 40 to 50 yards. Ardrey will find these rules stated by R. D. Estes in Natural History for February and March 1967 or by Schaller in National Geographic for April 1969. The latter says, “The lion must stalk to within a few feet of a potential victim before its rush has much chance of success. Prey animals are fully aware of the lion’s limitations. They have learned how near to a lion they may wander without danger of attack—usually to within about 120 feet. This leads to ludicrous situations . . . A visible lion is a safe lion.” Need I add that Ardrey’s “suicidal” impala were about 500 feet from danger.

To see that this critique is not only preposterous but a deliberate and malicious distortion of what Ardrey actually said, one need only read the passage in question. I found it on page 76 of my hard cover copy of The Social Contract, and it can be seen by clicking on the “Order and Disorder” chapter and scrolling down at the above link to book. It is worth quoting in full:

One afternoon we passed an all-male herd of twenty or twenty-five browsing impala, then a few hundred yards away came on a lioness sleeping under a tree. Approaching her too closely, we disturbed her. She rose, and for the first time was observed by the impala. We could hear the instant far off snort. Now the lioness moved away at deliberate pace toward another tree and another spot of shade. Immediately two impala detached themselves from their fellows and came running after her, sending back to the party repeated warning snorts. When she settled herself again, the two still lingered, watching tensely, giving their occasional snorts. Not until she had most evidently gone back to sleep did they trot away to rejoin their fellows, who never for a moment had stopped eating.

One cannot say that the two impala had accepted risks of a suicidal nature by following a lioness as sleepy as this one. Nevertheless, one can state in very nearly mathematical terms the survival value of approaching or fleeing the presence of a lion of unknown antagonism if you are an impala.

The observant reader will notice that Ardrey never expressed “amazement,” did not take the possibility seriously that the impala were “suicidal,” obviously had no intent of using the term “antagonism” as a scientifically rigorous description of lion behavior, and nowhere stated the minimum distance between the impala and the lion was either 500 feet or any other distance. He is merely using a personal anecdote to illustrate a point, and nowhere makes any claims, express or implied, about the feeding behavior of lions that would in any way justify Quigley’s gratuitous blather on the subject.

A familiar tactic of the old Blank Slaters was the blowing of smokescreens with scientific jargon. For example, they furiously pounced on anyone who used the term “instinct” in connection with human beings. “Instinct,” you see, was reserved for such programmed behavior as the building of nests by insects, and using to refer to open-ended predispositions became an inexcusable sin. Nowadays, of course, “instinct” is back in fashion as a vernacular term, and no one seems particularly confused when it is applied to humans. Here’s Quigley’s version of the smokescreen:

Moreover, this slovenly thinking, which ignores the distinction between animal societies and human societies, also ignores the distinction between social acts and biological actions. Thus he says that “the social life” of a leopard is “limited to a few occasional hours of copulation;” copulation is biological, not social, just as parturition is. The whole book is filled with his confusions of quite distinct things in this way.

I really doubt that anyone, except, perhaps, Quigley, was confused by Ardrey’s “unscientific” use of the term “social life” to describe copulation in leopards. Fortunately, the physicists have not seen fit to go around correcting everyone who doesn’t use terms like “work,” “energy,” “power,” etc., as they are defined in the scientific jargon. The substitution of jargon for the vernacular in this context would likely be similarly unhelpful.

Just as with the polemics exchanged between the iconoclasts and the iconodules, or the believers in Communion in both kinds with the believers in Communion in only one kind, such “reviews” usually conclude with the striking of moralistic poses and the raining down of anathemas on the object of the author’s ire. Quigley’s was no exception. Here is how “science” was enforced by the Blank Slaters:

Fundamentally, Ardrey is a racist, devoted to a belief in human inequality and unfreedom, an enemy of social “disorder” which must be suppressed by authority because man is a predatory, violent, aggressive creature, compelled by irresistible hereditary compulsion to war over territory. These are fascist ideas, and, in this book, Ardrey is doing for America what Treitschke, H. S. Chamberlain, Alfred Rosenberg, and others did for Germany: preparing an intellectual basis for fascist political action.

That Ardrey believed none of the things Quigley attributes to him in the above quote is a fact familiar to anyone who has actually read his books. He was, in fact, a liberal of the far left who nearly became a Communist himself at one point, or at least he was until he became familiar with the real nature of “progressive” ideologues in the school of hard knocks. None of this mattered to the “scientist” Quigley, who was intent on character assassination, not uncovering the truth. Comically enough, this ringing tribute to freedom of thought appeared a few paragraphs after Quigley piously observed that Ardrey seemed to think that the truth was being suppressed by the scientific establishment, and that,

The reasons for this conspiracy are not stated, but it seems to be partly because the established don’t want these brilliant young researchers, whom Ardrey has found, to eclipse them and show them up for the old fuddy-duddies that they are. Partly also for more secret political reasons related to Ardrey’s idea that there is a profoundly unscientific liberal establishment which is based on a number of lies like equality, democracy, and freedom (!) which makes it necessary for them to want to suppress the scientists that Ardrey is reporting on.

Not the least interesting bit in Quigley’s opus is the manner in which he actually slips in the knife, the ideological shibboleth of the Blank Slate cloaked in the mantle of science, quite unobtrusively midway through the review:

Ardrey tries to tell us what man is like. He insists that man is simply an animal (which implies that animals are simply men). This is, of course, contrary to general scientific belief, which holds that man evolved from an animal when his survival shifted from dependence upon inherited behavior to dependence upon learned behavior.

This, of course, is the actual point of all the browbeating and histrionic posing. Failing this “scientific fact” all the cherished utopias of the Blank Slaters collapse like a house of cards. Indeed, the most prominent of them, Communism, collapsed quite spectacularly, exposing Quigley’s “general scientific belief” as one of history’s most successful and damaging hoaxes in the process.

Herman Melville as an Anthropologist

In his The Origin of War, Dutch behavioral scientist Johan van der Dennen describes how his “perspective changed dramatically” as a result of Jane Goodall’s revelations about the aggressive behavior of chimpanzees and his own study of the history of human warfare. In his words,

What gradually emerged was the constancy beneath the superficial differences, the communality beneath the variations; it dawned upon me that all these variations were indeed variations on a common theme, and that this common theme must be something like a universal psychology. There was only one theory which could accommodate this new insight: evolutionary theory.

In other words, he concluded that this “common theme” could only be explained by some innate behavioral trait or traits, e.g., human nature. He settled on the catch-all term “sociobiology” for this approach, noting that the term in the lay vernacular has undergone relatively rapid and sometimes confusing change over the years, from ethology in the 60’s and 70’s to sociobiology after E. O. Wilson published his eponymous book in 1975 to evolutionary psychology today. In a footnote that appeared in the first chapter of his book, van der Dennen notes that his study of the history of warfare had not been “hampered by any methodological constraints”:

It was also growing dissatisfaction with the rather static character of the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) and its virtual monopoly position as a universal data base (though it is incomplete and unreliable: cf. Fedigan, 1986; Knauft, 1991), and the increasing number of discrepancies I seemed to discover between several other inventories and the sources I had uncovered, which prompted the Ethnological Inventory Project. Not hampered by any methodological constraints, I could freely indulge in the fascinating accounts of ‘savages’ reported by missionaries, travelers and adventurers from about the 16th century onward.

One can only hope that the “methodological constraints” he refers to don’t have the effect of tainting any source material used by anthropologists that wasn’t developed in “studies” done by other anthropologists. That’s a scary thought! The integrity of the “Men of Science” in the behavioral sciences has not been irreproachable. They did, after all, collectively subscribe to the “Blank Slate” imbecility for several decades, stoutly insisting that the effect of human nature on human behavior was either insignificant or nonexistent. They punctuated this insistence on “scientific facts” that any reasonably intelligent ten year old might have informed them were palpable nonsense by vilifying anyone who disagreed as fascist or otherwise politically suspect. Anyone doubting the fact need only consult that invaluable little piece of historical source material, Man and Aggression, edited by Ashley Montagu. The “fascinating accounts of ‘savages’ reported by missionaries, travelers and adventurers” were often done by people who were not only well-informed about similar work, but took a highly professional approach to their own reporting. If their objectivity was also impaired by faith in ideological dogmas, at least they were not the same ideological dogmas that prevailed during much of the 20th century.

In addition to the “missionaries, travelers, and adventurers” cited by Professor van der Dennen, I would add another category; novelists. Take for example, Herman Melville. Much of his work is so saturated with accounts of the exotic people and places he visited that some literary critics dismissed him as “a mere traveler.” His publisher insisted that his first books, Typee and Omoo, be published as novels because he thought no one would believe them as non-fiction. In fact, they contain a wealth of material of anthropological interest.

Take his first novel, Typee, for instance. Some of the incidents Melville recorded are certainly fictionalized, but he actually did live among a tribe of that name in the South Pacific. I doubt that he had any reason to fabricate his account of them, or at least none more weighty than the ideological constraints on modern anthropologists.

As has been the case with most authors since the dawn of recorded history who have had occasion to comment on the subject, and who possess an ounce of common sense, Melville recognized the existence of “inherent” human traits. In Chapter 27, for example, he describes the “altruism” that has been such a hot topic in academic journals lately, as it existed within the Typee ingroup.

It may reasonably be inquired, how were these people governed? How were their passions controlled in their everyday transactions? It must have been by an inherent principle of honesty and charity towards each other. They seemed to be governed by that sort of tacit common-sense law which, say what they will of the inborn lawlessness of the human race, has its precepts graven on every breast. The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same all the world over: and where these principles are concerned, the right and wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind. It is to this indwelling, this universally diffused perception of what is just and noble, that the integrity of the Marquesans in their intercourse with each other is to be attributed.

and,

They deal more kindly with each other, and are more humane, than many who study essays on virtue and benevolence… I will frankly declare, that after passing a few weeks in this valley of the Marqauesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had every before entertained.

Of course, these innate foundations of human morality are dual in nature. As Sir Arthur Keith pointed out long ago, and Robert Ardrey reiterated in a chapter of his African Genesis, it is our nature to apply very different standards of morality depending on whether we are dealing with ingroups or outgroups. This rather important fact isn’t discussed nearly as often as altruism in the academic journals. It is generally passed over in silence, because it is not in accord with generally approved standards of human “niceness.” Melville, however, not being a “Man of Science,” was ignorant of such fine distinctions. Immediately following the above, he added,

The strict honesty which the inhabitants of nearly all the Polynesian Islands manifest towards each other, is in striking contrast with the thieving propensities some of them evince in their intercourse with foreigners. It would almost seem that, according to their peculiar code of morals, the pilfering of a hatchet or a wrought nail from a European is looked upon as a praiseworthy action.

Those familiar with the Margaret Mead/Derek Freeman kerfluffle may be interested in Melville’s comments on conjugal arrangements among the Typee:

The males considerably outnumber the females. This hold true of many of the islands of Polynesia, although the reverse of what is the case in most civilized countries. The girls are first wooed and won, at a very tender age, by some stripling in the household in which they reside. This, however, is a mere frolic of the affections, and no formal engagement is contracted. By the time this first love has a little subsided, a second suitor presents himself, of graver years, and carries both boy and girl away to his own habitation. This disinterested and generous-hearted fellow now weds the young couple – marrying damsel and lover at the same time – and all three thenceforth live together as harmoniously as so many turtles… Infidelity on either side is very rare. No man has more than one wife, and no wife of mature years has less than two husbands, – sometimes she has three, but such instances are not frequent.

Melville witnessed few arguments, and the degree of unanimity among the Typee on most topics would be familiar to anyone who has noticed the “carbon copy” nature of opinions on political matters among the modern denizens of the ideological ingroups of the left and right.

There was one admirable trait in the general character of the Typees which, more than anything else, secured my admiration: it was the unanimity of feeling they displayed on every occasion. With them there hardly appeared to be any difference of opinion upon any subject whatever. They all thought and acted alike. I do not conceive that they could support a debating society for a single night: there would be nothing to dispute about.

As for that ubiquitous feature of human existence, warfare, Professor van der Dennen would not have been surprised by Melville’s observations. Another tribe, the Happar, also occupied the island home of the Typee, who attributed to them all the usual hateful qualities commonly associated with the outgroup. For some time after his arrival, Melville had witnessed nothing of the “clamors of war,” and was beginning to think the fierce reputation of the Typee among the neighboring tribes was a myth. However,

…subsequent events proved that I had been a little too premature in coming to this conclusion. One day about noon, I had lain down on the mats with several of the chiefs, and had gradually sunk into a most luxurious siesta, when I was awakened by a tremendous outcry, and starting up beheld the natives seizing their spears and hurrying out, while the most puissant of the chiefs, grasping the six muskets which were ranged against the bamboos, followed after, and soon disappeared in the groves. These movements were accompanied by wild shouts, in which “Happar, Happar,” greatly predominated.

The mayhem done in this particular campaign was not great:

The total loss of the victors on this obstinately contested affair was, in killed wounded and missing – one forefinger and part of a thumbnail (which the late proprietor brought along with him in his hand), a severely contused arm, and a considerable effusion of blood flowing from the thigh of a chief, who had received an ugly thrust from a Happar spear.

In a later battle, the Typee brought back several Happar killed.

There are many other worthy contributions to the anthropological literature among the writings of “missionaries, travelers and adventurers,” not to mention novelists like Melville. Some of the best can be found in the two great British quarterlies of the first half of the 19th century, the Whig Edinburgh Review and the Tory Quarterly Review. The editors held their authors to very high standards of accuracy and detail. Occasionally one finds interesting differences between these accounts and the later descriptions of the “Men of Science.” In view of affairs such as the collusion of the American Anthropological Association in the smear and slandering of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and geneticist James Neel, whose findings in their study of the South American Yanomamö people were apparently deemed politically unsuitable in some quarters, not to mention the debacle of the Blank Slate, I would be disinclined to automatically favor the latter.