Noble savages

Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon arrived in Venezuela's Amazon region in 1964 to study the Yanomamo Indians, one of the last large tribal groups still living in isolation. He expected to find Rousseau's "noble savages" living contentedly in a pristine state of nature. Instead he discovered a very violent society. Men who killed others had the most wives and the most children. The prime reason for this violence was to avenge deaths and abduct women. Chagnon felt their violence gave them an evolutionary advantage, a controversial theory that was not believed by some cultural anthropologists.