I’m currently reading Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky edited by Peter R. Mitchell & John Schoeffel, published 2002 by The New Press, New York. The editors put the book together by transcribing tapes of Q&A sessions at public talks by Noam Chomsky held between 1989 and 1999. The book’s footnotes are on line at http://understandingpower.com/
In chapter two of the printed book, on page 65, Chomsky, in discussing conditions in Central America, says “…look at Brazil: potentially an extremely rich country with tremendous resources, except it had the curse of being part of the Western system of subordination. So in northwest Brazil, for example, which is a rather fertile area with plenty of rich land, just it’s all owned by plantations. Brazilian medical researchers now identify the population as a new species with about 40 per cent the brain size of human beings, a result of generations of profound malnutrition and neglect – and this may be unremediable except after generations, because of the lingering effects of malnutrition on one’s offspring.”
Here’s the footnote for this:
On the new human species in northeast Brazil, see for example, Isabel Vincent,
*Life a struggle for Pygmy family, * Globe & Mail (Toronto), December 17, 1991, p. A15. An excerpt: “A diet consisting mainly of manioc flour, beans and rice has affected [northeastern Brazilian laborers’] mental development to the point that they have difficulty remembering or concentrating. Fully 30.7 per cent of children in the Northeast are born malnourished, according to Unicef and the Brazilian Ministry of Health. . . Brazilian medical experts have known of undernourishment in the country’s poorest region for more than two decades, but they confirmed only recently the existence of a much more startling problem – a severe lack of protein in their diet that is producing a population of Brazilian Pygmies known by some medical researchers in Brazil as homens nanicos. Their height at adulthood is far less than the average height recording by the World Health Organization and their brain capacity is 40 per cent less than average. . . . In the poorest states of the Northeast, such as Alagoas and Piaui, homens nanicos comprise about 30 per cent of the population. . . . Much of the Northeast comprises fertile farm land that is being taken up by large plantations for the production of cash crops such as sugar cane.”
Okay, I note that Chomsky refers to the Brazilian Pygmies as having 40% of the normal human brain size, while the article excerpt in the footnote says their brain capacity is 40% less then normal. Assume that the article has it right, and Chomsky, speaking from memory, reversed the percentages. We’re still talking about people with a brain capacity that is only 60% of the norm for homo sapiens.
Holy Shit! I feel an impulse to rush to northeast Brazil! (But do I want to help these people… or study them?) My questions for the Teeming Millions: To which pre-human species are the Brazilian Pygmies equivalent? And does anyone know of any studies done on this population since the one 1991 article cited? I’m really wondering what sort of society they’ve built.
The article Chomsky cites doesn’t say anything about a new species. It says a population and doesn’t even imply there’s a new species. I think Chomsky (if he actually said that and wasn’t misquoted) has severely misinterpreted his source material and only used the term “species” because he’s not clear on the concept.
None! Starving people doesn’t have shit to do with making them “pre-human!” The effects of malnutrition are not in any way equivalent to going back to one’s ancestral state. All human beings are the same species, and none of us are equivalent in any way to “pre-humans,” no matter how poor we are or how dark our skin is.
Maybe we should first define what would be considered a “different species” Would a genetic disorder like spina biffida or downs syndrome be enough of a differentiation? XXY chromosomes, extra finger, what?(I am not trying to demean or consider these people “not human” just looking for a line). Even if someone with one of these situations WAS a different species I would still consider all of them to have the right we all do now.
JMAN: sounds like you misread the OP. The book claims the above. Bob Scene states that the book’s authors seems to be misinterpreting the following passage:
No mention of a “new species” simply stating the effects of malnutrition. Perhaps the author’s of the book suffer from smaller than average brains.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Chronic malnutrition does not make people into a new species. Chromosomal abnormalities do not make a new species.
A charitible interpretation: I don’t know portuguese, but it might be that the word translated as “species” actually has a different meaning in portuguese, and the translator made a stupid mistake.
An more likely interpretation: The article is bunk, and Chomsky is an idiot. I know this is General Questions, but…
A technical definition (but not an absolute definition, as it varies from person to person) is a species is something that can produce fetile offspring with another. So two Horses are a species as they make little horses that can have their own little horses, but when a horse and a donkey get together, they create an unfetile mule, which is not it’s own species.
i
Well, calling them “Homo nanicos” sounds like a species designation to me. But then, those might just be the Portugese words for “Starving people”, or some such, and the resemblence to binomial nomenclature just coincidental.
Classification of organisms is NOT an exact science.
But the most recognized test of seperation of species is if two different species interbreed, then they are not seperate species (though they could be sub-species).
So, if you want to fly down to Brazil, and bone one of these little suckers, and one of you (I’d assume you’d be the one puking every morning since I don’t know a whole lot of dudes named “Hazel”, none that I hang with anyway) pops out a baby Hazel-pygmy, SHAZAM- you’re the same species! (*NOTE- THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS TO THIS RULE IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM)
As for the creation of a seperate species, the only way that I know that can happen is by natural selection. This case is more of a case of de-evolution (everybody now: “WHIP IT!!! WHIP IT GOOD!!!” :D).
IIRC, a new species can only be formed over hundreds of thousands of years by adapting to their environment to SURVIVE, not get totally fucked up by some Brazzillion dollar South American multi-national dumping DDT in the Amazon and shrnking their brains.
So it would take a human with a specific genetic anomaly who could only interbreed successfully with someone who had the same genetic anomaly to create a new species of human? Or am I not following the anology correctly.
**Brazilian medical experts have known of undernourishment in the country’s poorest region for more than two decades, but they confirmed only recently the existence of a much more startling problem – a severe lack of protein in their diet that is producing a population of Brazilian Pygmies known by some medical researchers in Brazil as homens nanicos. **
Oh, and when I see the phrase "Brazilian medical experts " I get immediately susupicious!
The latter is the case. The article has it as homens nanicos, but it should be homems nanicos, which is simply Portuguese for “small men.” It is clearly not a scientific name (which in this case would be Homo nanus).
Close, but not exactly. Under the Biological Species Concept, the rule is that, to be considered separate species, two forms must not regularly hybridize under natural conditions. It’s OK if they produce fertile offspring in captivity, or only rarely or under exceptional conditions in nature - they still will be considered separate.
However, as drachillix speculates, if a certain human population developed some characteristic that prevented them from producing fertile offspring with other humans outside their own population - say, some chromosomal abnormality - they would be considered a separate species under the Biological Species Concept.
However, this is pretty clearly not the situation in the case mentioned in the OP.
I wonder if the problem isn’t rooted in a mistranslation somwhere along the line. In English, species most often means “biological species.” In my (admittedly slight) experience with Portuguese, it seems to me that espécie most often means “sort” or “type” and only more rarely “biological species.” So a report written in Portuguese about a different type of human might easily be misconstrued by an English speaker as being about a different biological species of human.
What if they hybridize under natural conditions in some places but not in others? this link lists such a bird scenario http://www.stanfordalumni.org/birdsite/text/essays/Species_and_Speciation.html with the Red-breasted and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Nature seems determined to keep from conforming to our rules.
The fact is, there is a continuum between population-subspecies-species, and you can get all kinds of intermediate situations. In such cases it is a largey a judgement call on the part of the scientist writing the article. Some years ago the Baltimore and Bullocks’ Orioles were merged (as the “Northen Oriole”) because they hybridize locally on the Great Plains. More recently it was decided that the hybridization was too localized to warrant considering them the same species, and they have been split again.
This is one of the reasons some biologists opt for other species definitions than the Biological Species Concept. However, nature is not clear cut and there will always be anomalies whatever definition you choose.
The fact is, there is a continuum between population-subspecies-species, and you can get all kinds of intermediate situations. In such cases it is a largey a judgement call on the part of the scientist writing the article. Some years ago the Baltimore and Bullocks’ Orioles were merged (as the “Northen Oriole”) because they hybridize locally on the Great Plains. More recently it was decided that the hybridization was too localized to warrant considering them the same species, and they have been split again.
This is one of the reasons some biologists opt for other species definitions than the Biological Species Concept. However, nature is not clear cut and there will always be anomalies whatever definition you choose.
Granted, they can presumably make babies with “regular people” and so are not technially a separate species. But it would seem that we have a group of people who are enough smaller then whatever’s normal for their region that they are being called pygmies, and whose brain size is aprox. 60% of the current human norm – due to generations of abysmally poor nutrition. And according to Chomsky, even if they suddenly and permenenly obtained good diets, it would take several generations for their desendents to get back to average human sized bodies and brains.
Meanwhile, my impression is that there are whole villages where everyone is a homens nanico. I’m wondering what their society is like. You can think of them as mentally retarded people, but I don’t know of any other place where you have villages of mentally retarded people (all retarded to about the same degree) living independently. I’m wondering about their sociey. If you compared two Brazilian villages, one of “pygmies” and one of “regualar people”, what would be the differences in their social structure, daily lives, etc?
And, to rephrase my other question, I’m also wondering which prehuman species had brains that were aprox. 60% the size of current homo sapiens brains.
