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From stolfi@ic.unicamp.br  Sun Mar 13 17:46:20 2005
Message-ID: <36255.143.106.23.232.1110746779.squirrel@webmail.ic.unicamp.br>
In-Reply-To: <200503130400.j2D3xx7Y018654@pop2.alphalink.com.au>
References: <200503130400.j2D3xx7Y018654@pop2.alphalink.com.au>
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 17:46:19 -0300 (BRT)
Subject: Re: [Piraha] Re: I'll swap you...
From: "Jorge Stolfi" <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: jguy@alphalink.com.au

FROM: http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/book/2-07-The_Marvellous_Case_of_the_Piraha.html

  [...]

  They cannot even draw straight lines; as Everett continues from above,
  "In literacy classes, however, we were never able to train a Piraha to
  even draw a straight line without serious 'coaching' and they are
  never able to repeat the feat in subsequent trials without more
  coaching." This is highly significant, given that the straight line is
  itself an abstraction, being absent from nature, an abstraction,
  moreover, fraught with powerful cultural and psychological
  implications. At the most literal level, the Piraha do not engage in
  linear thinking.

  [...]

Omigosh! The poor wretches! I am writing right away to President Lula,
urging him to send those starving souls some emergency rations! Or at
least a supply of *stringed* bows and *straight* arrows, so that they
can catch their game without having to hand-throw theirarrows along
some fractal-like cuspidal umbilic curve.

Although, since their language lacks tense anyway, they probably cannot
tell the difference between "before eating" and "after eating".  Maybe
that is why they have survived 200 years in contact with Brazilians and Tupi
without ever learning the use of food or ruled spreadsheets.

Thus I fully subscribe to the alert I just read in some linguistics chat site:
we simply *cannot* allow the pirahã to learn about numbers, colors, or Portuguese!
That could be as disastrous to their culture as, say, learning some French would be
to the American one.

All the best,

--stolfi 8-)