Ah, settled science!
Remember “the gentle Tasaday,” whose language had no words for “war” or “conflict”? Yowsah. They lived in the sticks in the Philippines, supposedly cut off from the rest of humanity for at least a thousand years, and therefor “natural” and “unspoiled”–living proof that man, if left uncorrupted by capitalism or whatever, is born to be a hippy.
Not.
After a couple of media orgasms, it came out that the Gentle Tasaday were just another hoax (https://leeduigon.com/2015/11/22/the-stone-age-tribe-that-wasnt/). They were putting us on. It seems being international media stars beats being poor.
And to think they could’ve wound up decorating containers of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream!
Ah, well–the next hoax will be even better. Maybe someone will discover a tribe of naturally transgender persons who’ve been messing about with their identities for a thousand years and still can’t make up their minds…
Makes me think of “Coming of Age in Samoa” by Martha Mead claiming it is the environment that makes us the way we are (especially adolescent girls) not our biological essence. Her “work” was pretty much proved to be fraudulent – she had an ax to grind. For a great read try reading “Samoa: A Historical Novel” by Robert Schaffer. A good friend of mine edited it so that’s why I was interested in reading it. Martha Mead had it all wrong in 1928.
The absolute greatest thing about “Coming of Age in Samoa” was that the Samoans thought Mead was a chump and were putting her on, to amuse themselves. Much of what she wrote about them wasn’t true: they only invented it to hose her down.