Reddit reviews The Forest People

Colin Turnbull's The Forest People is as well written as any novel.

We studied a few Pygmy groups for a Cultural Anthropology class I had some years ago. We read The Forest People by Colin Turnbull, it was about his stay with the BaMbuti Pygmies and touched on many different events and some personal stories from the tribespeople. Made mention how they were regarded by, er, not Pygmy people (Spoiler alert: not well).

It was a fucking great read... I highly recommend it.

It seems like we heaped stuff on them because it's easier to see the faults in something you're familiar with.

There's also a relatively recent cultural tendency (around Turnbull's time, iirc - good book btw) to blame western influence on issues. While that can be true and accurate, and is in many cases, it doesn't mean it's always the case and isn't necessarily to the massive degree people will attribute it to. It's the opposite of the blame the victim mentality, really.

I'm fairly certain that you already know that change isn't necessarily negative or positive, just neutral. Cultures don't change entirely from being influenced by another one - syncretism occurs, the blending of things, so many of the problems mentioned above were already there, just differently expressed in a context you're unfamiliar with. The cultural influence merged with those aspects and the result was them expressed in a form you recognize as culturally familiar, making it easy to attribute it to western culture as that's what you know. Much of the stuff you see now chains back centuries or more and this is just the latest step.

> (men are studs and awesome, women are sluts and should be ashamed)

That's a cultural perception of sex, not a result of views on sexuality. Some cultures have had the opposite seen as the norm, where a woman having lovers was seen as a right and a status symbol and the man being untrustworthy if he was with too many women.

For starters: Wikipedia - Paleolithic Diet

I was really into anthropology a few years ago. Among other things I recall reading was that when humans first started eating grains 10,000 years ago, the average human lost a foot in height due to the lack of nutrients in neolitihic (grain-based) diets as compared to the paleolithic diet which their bodies had evolved to eat. This unhealthy diet, combined with sedentary living conditions (animal and human domestication) also led to either the introduction of - or massive increases of - almost every form of disease, including influenza, cancer, asthma, allergies, and heart disease, which continue to rise to this day.

Books I would recommend on the topic:

The Forest People by Colin Turnbull (study of a hunter-gatherer pygmy tribe, almost utopian)

The Mountain People by Colin Turnbull (study of an african tribe recently forced to adopt agriculture, truly horrific to read)

Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures by Marvin Harris

Twilight of the Machines by John Zerzan

My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning

Probably the best example of a truly sustainable human culture is in hunter gatherer tribes such as the Mbuti

https://www.amazon.com/Forest-People-Colin-Turnbull/dp/0671640992

Was the book I read over a decade ago that set me down this path.

The only ethical argument I can imagine for everything science/industry/judeo-Christianity have done to the planet and its species is that it gives us the potential to colonize other worlds before a massive extinction event.

Of course, I'd wager it is somewhat likely we will do that to ourselves.

Women may fail when there is no strength in men. Children may fail when there is no strength in women. Humanity may fail when there is no strength in children :(

The Forest People by Colin Turnbull for an anthropology class I had to take to complete my University Cores. Its one of the few non-architecture related books I kept after college.