Little attention is paid to the profound effect the physical environment has on people. On the surface level, it does not seem as though the culture and behavior of a society has any correlation to their surroundings. However, Marvin Harris’ cultural materialism has helped uncover some of society’s mysteries by analyzing the modes of production and reproduction—both of which are influenced by the nature. His study on the Yanomamo American Indian tribe provides an interesting example of how a one’s environment subtly affects one’s behavior, customs, and values.
Yanomano society is characterized by warfare, treachery, and cruelty to women. “War is the ultimate expression of the Yanomano lifestyle. They enter into a series of alliances with neighboring villages, but intergroup relations are marred by unending mistrust, malicious rumors, and acts of consummate treachery.” Villages hold feasts for neighboring villages supposedly to strengthen alliances, but these often result in duels where warriors from both ends of the camp fight to the limits of their endurance. During raids, their objective is not loot the enemy’s village but to kill as many men and capture as many women as possible.
The Yanomano justify their violent behavior by claiming that most duels and raids are caused by disputes over women. Women are in short supply, and the capture of women from neighboring villages is usually one of the prime objectives of these raids. However, Marvin says that “the shortage of women is artificially created” . Because Yanomano males require that their first born child to be a male, their wives must kill their female infants until they produce a boy. Afterwards, infants of either sex can be killed. What is interesting is that the women can easily do the reverse (kill the males instead of the females) or allow the female babies to live. Yanomano women give birth in a forest far from the village with no males present, providing them with an opportunity to save their female babies without fear of getting caught or retaliation. Why do they still practice selective infanticide on the females?
The answer lies in their mode of production. The Yanomano are a nomadic people whose ancestors were able to grow crop of plantain and bananas. The population increased as their food supply increased, but there was a problem: they were lacking protein in their diet. Yanomano males were able to provide protein by hunting down monkeys, deer, and other animals from the forest. However, their intensive hunting easily wiped out the populations of these forest animals, and unlike the Amazonian tribes they were unable to learn how to fish. Protein was considered as a very scare resource and all villages fought for it fiercely. This is why the women continue to practice selective infanticide—more males means more hunters for the village, and more hunters means more protein. Although the surplus of males has led to various conflicts with other villages, this is the price they are willing to pay to satisfy their hunger for meat.
The study on the Yanomanos made me realize that every civilization starts out as a primitive society struggling for survival. What makes these societies different from the other is the kind of environment they happened to settle on since their culture emerges once they start to adapt to and master the environment. Our early ancestors could have easily turned out to be like the Yanomanos if the Philippines had not been such a fertile island. Scarcity of resources was rarely a problem since agriculture was the early Filipinos’ main source of livelihood. Their crop consisted of rice, sugarcane, coconuts, and various other fruits and vegetables, and these were supplemented with fish and poultry. Thus, none of our ancestors had to resort to infanticide to control the population. Relations among early Filipinos were more or less peaceful; various barangays settled near each other to be able of help to the other in case of war. True enough, the only people they fought were colonizers who tried to appropriate our land. While modern Filipinos behave differently from the early Filipinos, it cannot be ignored that the root of our values and beliefs still come from our Malayan forefathers who established the beginnings of Filipino culture as we know it today.
