Nomads of the Long Bow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia

by Allan R. Holmberg

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Genres: Anthropology

Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a somewhat unusual history, in that it was originally written merely as a doctoral dissertation. In the edition I read, one of the author’s colleagues contributed a Foreword in which he comments that “very few [of such documents] are readable as literature.” Submitted in 1947, Holmberg’s thesis excited intense debate among anthropologists, and a book edition soon went out of print.

Holmberg spent some years in the 1940s with a people called the Siriono, who lived in the Amazonian rainforest part of Bolivia. By this time many Siriono lived at a Bolivian Government Indian School, where they were subject to forced labour. Only a few scattered bands still lived according to their ancient semi-nomadic lifestyle, and these were to disappear a few years later, something in which the author inadvertently played a part. It’s explained in an Appendix to the edition I read, and is a perfect illustration of the old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

The book’s origin as an academic exercise means that it is not a personal memoir. Apart from the final section the author largely keeps himself out of the text, which instead consists of “technical” descriptions of the life of the Siriono – marriage practices, funeral rites, diet, living conditions etc. Whether the reader enjoys this book will really depend on whether they find this type of material engaging.

Holmberg describes the Siriono as possessing an unusually simple material culture, even compared with their neighbours. The Foreword describes it as equivalent to the Palaeolithic. One thing that particularly surprised me was that the Siriono had lost the ability to make fire, though older members of the band said their people had once known how. The author doesn’t say so, but I wondered whether this was down to the severe reduction in their numbers. It has been observed that in these kind of societies, a decline in numbers can lead to a loss of skills.

This simplicity of their technology is a factor in the author’s main argument, which is the extent to which Siriono culture was shaped by a daily struggle to find food. As the author put it “The supply of food is rarely abundant and always insecure…When food is plentiful people eat to excess and do little else; when it is scarce they go hungry whilst looking for something else to eat.” Such was the prevalence of food deprivation that the author argues it significantly affected the culture and behaviour of the Siriono. Holmberg tells us their society was characterised by individualism and lack of cooperation, which he believed had resulted from continual food stress. He extended this argument to conclude that “The Siriono data would indicate…that man in the raw state of nature…is anything but cooperative, generous, submissive or kind.”

Certainly an interesting argument. Holmberg’s book was apparently strongly criticized by Charles C. Mann in his book 1491. I read that about 10 years ago but can’t remember what Mann said about Holmberg. Probably that section didn’t stick with me as I hadn’t heard of Holmberg at the time. I’ll leave it to the professional anthropologists to slug this one out.

[Lanny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of Allan R. Holmberg through Charles C. Mann's book _1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus_
which uses Holmberg's work as a prototype for what he theorizes is a huge mistake in our perception of Amazonian history. (From Wikipedia) Mann was inspired to write this book because he was taught in high school that "Indians came across the Bering Strait about 13,000 years ago, that they had so little impact on their environment that even after millennia of habitation the continents remain mostly wilderness." He examines what he terms "Holmberg's mistake", named for the anthropologist Allan R. Holmberg, who lived among the Siriono in the 1940s and came to the conclusion that they were the most "culturally backward peoples" in the world. Mann writes that Holmberg's theory was in fact a mistake, because smallpox and influenza devastated Siriono villages during the 1920s, and the Siriono were the "persecuted survivors of a recently shattered culture." I picked this up because it was cheap and in perfect condition and is a nice index to Mann's book which I feel is really an Earth-changing book or should be, or at least a really good read. One thing is for sure, the gigantic mounds of pottery shards in the area where the Siriono live were made by someone, and that someone would really have to be a pretty large someone because these mounds are rather large and numerous and mysterious, make that very mysterious, in the sense of, what was the cultural practice that created these? The Siriono have long forgotten, and barely made it into the contemporary world.

[Tim A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unremarkable until the last ten pages, in which the author describes his "adventures in culture change," that is, his significant contributions to the exploitation and eventual disintegration of the society he studied. Twenty years after his research, he says he feels guilty...

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author lowkey kinda boo

But LETS GO SIRIONOs!!!!