Welcome to leave it.!

If you are looking at this blog right now, than you just got awesomer. Leave it. is all about super cool primitive societies such as the Yanomamo. Yay? I think so.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Yanomamo yes!!

Hunting, Gathering, and Gardening.
Wild Foods
The Jungle provides lots of wild food that can be harvested and eaten by the Yanomamo tribes.  At some points in the year, the Tribes could probably live off of wild foods alone.  When the Yanomamo go "camping," they greatly depend on these wild resources.  The most common game animals are two kinds  of large game birds, two wild pig species, rodents, and small birds.  insects, fish, larvae, tadpoles, and freshwater crabs are eaten as well.  In some regions, snakes, toads, and frogs are consumed as well. 


 So the Yanomamo eat giant grubs that are boiled down into one huge while grub ball. and they have palm heart orgies. cool.
 Ok so some of the most common vegetable foods they eat are hardwoods, brazil nuts, tubers, seed pods and mushrooms, as well as many varieties of palm.  They eat the palm heats and the palm fruits.  sometimes, 12 people could eat up to 50 pounds of palm hearts in one sitting. 
Two of the palm fruits they eat are called the karashi and the yeti.  they are leathery and have a hard seed on the inside.  they are slimy and stringy and they taste like soap.  Yum? a third one of them has scales that are much like those upon a fish.  and it tastes like cheese.
The Yanomamo totally adore honey.  if someone comes back to the village late one night, it is expected that they have been tearing apart a bee's nest.
they dip leaves in honey liquid and then rinsed and put in a leave covered pit full of water, to make a drink.  they dip the honey combs into this water and eat the larvae covered leaves. 

The yanomamo have had many western items introduced to them by outsiders, such as fishing poles, canoes, flashlights, and in since 1965, shotguns.  Personally, it seems silly to ruin their primitive ways even if it is more efficient.  If the Yanomamo needed a gun to survive, they would have invented one. 
      80% of the Yanomamo food is in fact harvested from gardens of theirs.  they grow large amounts of plantains.   sometimes they will slip gardens into clear spots in a jungle, or in between widely space trees.  When a garden is created, the Yanomamo will leave the large trees, but clear away the smaller ones, and the brush.  They then chop down the large ones with steel axes to let in light for their crops.  The more elderly tribe members recall that when they were younger, they had to kill the trees by carving away a ring of bark, or piling up brush along the stump and burning the bottom down. 
        Each man clears his own gardening space usually after he is married. It is a life-time activity and it's each man for his own.  If a man underestimates haw much land he needs to clear for his entire family, it is very frowned upon.  It's a man's duty to sow enough crops to sustain himself, as it's considered pretty rude to have to borrow from others.


Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Epically YANOMAMO ;)

-Shelter
Houses are made of materials collected from the jungle such as Poles, vines and leaves.  Villages are made with surrounding gardens. There is a huge structure in the center with the central plaza and the most important house. To build this huge structure, called the "Shabono," there is tons of planning and preparation.  Then many days of work.  The "Shabono" lasts only two years, however, because the leaves start to decay, and the roof gets infested with spiders, roaches, and other insects to such an extent, that they have to burn down the entire structure.  It looks like one huge house but in actuality it is several houses.  The first step of building the Shabono is finding the right location.  Then they did 4 main posts in the ground, digging holes prior with machetes sticks, and scooping with their hands.  two smaller 5 foot tall poles are stuck in the back, and two taller, 10 foot ones in the front.  The front and back poles stand between 8-10 feet apart from each other.  horizontal cross poles then added diagonally, and after there are long saplings called "hanto nahi," which are laid diagonal to the cross poles.  vines and roofing are then thatched to the building.the Shabonos are often surrounded by 10-foot high palisades if there is a nearby threat.  they then lash them together with vines, and cover it with dry brush in the night, so that if there is so much as a slightest rustle, the dogs will awake, then the people.
         when they go out on trips or move, they can create camps in about 30 minutes by making several simple, triangular flat-roofed huts.  When it's sleep time, they string up their hammocks, and go to sleep with hopes that the roof won't leak, although they often do.