The origin of the Yanomami (of Leveratto YURI)

10 January 2010

The Yanomami are an indigenous people of South America, whose total number amounted to about 27,000 people.
They live near the Brazil-Venezuela border in the Sierra Parime, where they STARTED rivers which then flow into the Rio Negro in the Amazon and Orinoco basin for the Venezuelan side. The Yanomami who live in the Brazilian territory is about 15,000. They were given a huge territory of 94,000 km square well. This latter finding is strange: how can 15,000 people, which are now sedentary, require a territory as large as the entire Portugal?
The Yanomami live in these villages which is oval shabonos, whose roof is in common. Subsistence farmers, especially based on the cultivation of cassava and bananas, as well as hunting, fishing and gathering wild fruits. The Yanomami diet is particularly low in salt, and their blood pressure is very low. For this reason underwent surgeries to try to understand whether there is a correlation between hypertension and excessive salt consumption.
Some of them practice the Endocannibalism, or the practice of ingesting the remains of their loved ones incinerated. The ceremony of cremation of the deceased is very complex, but the ultimate goal is to free the soul from the body so it can continue to exist eternally.
After burning the body proceeds to the crushing of the bones and then all'endocannibalismo, or ingestion of the ashes of the bones of deceased relatives. Also any personal item of the deceased is burned, it is believed that evil spirits can hide some.
According to some linguists the Yanomami language is part of the Macro-Je, but according to other scholars is an idiom totally isolated. It includes four dialects (Ianomans, Sanumá, and Ianan Ianomamo).
The fact that the language of the Yanomami have been considered long time as isolated language has led some anthropologists to define the Yanomami as a pure breed, direct descendants of Asians who arrived in the Americas from the Bering Strait, about 14 millennia ago. In my opinion this thesis is wrong, and because the Yanomami have historically invaded the lands of Macu (also called Borowa), and it got mixed up with women belonging to different tribes, and because some of them have green eyes and pale skin typical Caucasoid traits, and therefore derived from crosses with the Europeans, probably Spaniards who sought the fabled city of Manoa (or El Dorado), since 1540.
By carefully observing the faces of the Yanomami are known so that their origin is mixed: mostly Asian, Negroid and Caucasoid but also as evidenced by the shape of the nose and green eyes of some people. In recent years there have been various disputes and controversies relating to the indigenous Yanomami. In particular, in 2000 scientists Napoleon Chagnon and James Neel prevelato have some indigenous blood and sent it abroad without informing them that he would be held indefinitely in those laboratories.
This practice, which they consider contrary to the beliefs Yanomami taboo permanence in time to blood or body parts of a deceased person was denounced and sought the return of blood drawn, but to date nothing has been done to repair groped 'happened.
The two scientists have also been blamed for introducing viruses and bacteria (unknowingly), in Yanomami lands and have indirectly facilitated the entry in the garimpeiros (gold miners).
The entry of about 40,000 garimpeiros since 1990 in the Yanomami indigenous territory is a serious problem, because the gold diggers are violent and determined in their purpose, without caring for the environment and without respect for the life of the natives.
Other commentators however argue that the demarcation of indigenous areas huge (much bigger than a limited native population might need), are quite strange. Not only the indigenous Yanomami area, but other indigenous Amazonian areas, disproportionate to the small population of natives, closed to any outside researcher or journalist, do not be so controlled areas by the federal government but rather by external organizations that could implement relevant to each type (mineral, biodiverse, the use of water) without external interference, always with the approval of docile natives naive and easily bribed.