Anthropologist Pierre Pica has spent ten years studying the Munduruku tribe of the Brazilian Amazon region. Their language has no tenses, plural forms, or numbers greater than five. Pica described life in a society where quantification was largely unnecessary:
The rest of the article describes at length how people understand numbers cross-culturally.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Wikimedia Commons
To get to the Munduruku, Pica had to wait for some locals to take him to their territory by canoe.
"How long did you wait?" I inquired.
"I waited quite a lot. But don't ask me how many days."
"So, was it a couple of days?" I suggested tentatively. A few seconds passed as he furrowed his brow: "It was about two weeks."
The more I pushed Pica for facts and figures, the more reluctant he was to provide them. "When I come back from Amazonia, I lose sense of time and sense of number, and perhaps sense of space." This inability to give me quantitative data was part of his culture shock. He had spent so long with people who can barely count that he had lost the ability to describe the world in terms of numbers.
The rest of the article describes at length how people understand numbers cross-culturally.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Wikimedia Commons
No numbers greater than five? Wow! How do they manage in the jungle with only half the usual supply of fingers and toes?
The desired knowledge comes from -- get this -- reading the damned article.
I just find it hard to believe there are any more truly untouched tribes in the wilds of anywhere. Supposedly the Tasaday had no word for blue. A color they never encountered despite being able to see the sky. These people supposedly went undiscovered until 1970, living in a cave a three hour hike from town.
I am not surprised that there are cultures that see things differently. That is normal. Pick up a bible. ever wonder why 40 keeps showing in days of rain and years in the wilderness? Or Methusela living 900 years?
They were the preliterate middle easterners' descriptions of a "shiteload." But to not pick up on base ten?
Pierre Pica's reluctance to discuss specific facts and figures in the article almost screams "Kippendorf's Tribe" to me.
And the Munduruku have been living peacefully within Brazil since their last makor tribal wars in about 1800.
Maybe of the article linked originated somewhere besides that paragon of journalism, The Guardian, it would have been easier to buy
Instead of our frantic measuring, pacing, dividing...
Ah what bliss---
There is no beginnig, there is no end........
For whatever reason, this reminds me of how our brain is hardwired to overestimate angle of inclination, probably so we don't try to climb steep hills.
So, it seems that the ability to count more than 5 isn't particularly important in evolution, but the ability to discourage oneself from climbing steep hills was (yes, I know that's not how evolution works, so no hate mails, mmkay?)