Darkness in El Dorado
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Darkness in El Dorado (subtitled: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon) is a controversial book published by the investigative journalist Patrick Tierney in 2000.
The book deals with the impact of contact with the modern world, and specifically, the discipline of anthropology, on the Yanomamo people of southern Venezuela and north western Brazil. The title refers both to the story of El Dorado (an account of an indigenous civilisation encountered in roughly the same geographic area by the earliest European explorers) and to the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
The book became controversial because of the accusations of improper, unethical and criminal conduct which it levelled against the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and the, then recently deceased, geneticist James Neel. Part of Tierney's charges against Chagnon state that Chagnon's distribution of trade goods among the Yanomamo may have intensified warfare and other violent behaviors thus skewing his data. The Anthropological Association has since made stern statements concerning the proper conduct for anthropologists in the field.
A detailed investigation of these charges by a panel set up by the University of Michigan found the most serious charges to have no foundation and others to have been exaggerated. Many commentators sympathetic to evolutionary psychology have portrayed the affair as an ideologically inspired blood libel on its practitioners. These accounts have mostly focused upon the role played by Leslie Sponsel and Terence Turner in collaborating with the book's preparation and originating an inflammatory memo to the American Anthropological Association which was leaked (contrary to their declared intention).
