# The Piraha: Counting, Language, and Culture **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705 "2006-04-29T03:33:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bitwise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@bitwise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bitwise)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/1 "2006-04-29T03:33:03Z")
This page discusses the Piraha, a primitive tribe that lacks the ability to count. [http://www.jcrows.com/withoutnumbers.html](http://www.jcrows.com/withoutnumbers.html) First, I would like some of the claims made in the linked page confirmed. I am especially incredulous of the following: 1. … [A]dult Piraha apparently can’t learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time. 2. They have no creation myths, tell no fictional stories and have no art. If these claims are true, what could be the reason? I find it difficult to believe that language and culture can inhibit the ability of the Piraha to learn. Maybe, the students were too old; women and children apparently did not participate. (I doubt it is a genetic anomaly caused by isolation and inbreeding, since they apparently share their women with Brazilian traders.) Lastly, are there any studies about the counting abilities of non-human primates? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/2 "2006-04-29T03:46:43Z")
> [@the linked site](#): > > They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations. They don’t sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or day. Aha! Sleep deprivation is inhibiting their neurogenesis! ---
**Author:** ![marginal\_prophet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dbc845/32.png) [@marginal\_prophet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marginal_prophet)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/3 "2006-04-29T17:25:53Z")
Creation myths are not innate. One person in Sumer wrote the first one. Nearly a century went by before it was set to verse. Within a few months it rose to the top of the charts and was picked up by impressionable children wherever it was played. As it was translated it was modified, sometimes by simple misunderstanding. If it contained a number for example, like 7 days, then cultures without numbers would make hash of it. ---
**Author:** ![marginal\_prophet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dbc845/32.png) [@marginal\_prophet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marginal_prophet)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/4 "2006-04-29T17:37:55Z")
Seriously, though, I had a lot of in-laws that never told tales or myths. They lived in the here and now, on a farm. Art? Hardly. And as for numbers, I’m sure they didn’t catch on until a year after everyone else in the class. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/5 "2006-04-29T18:38:08Z")
From the article it seems that they somehow have never acquired the ability of abstract thought. They appear to live in the here and now. Numbers, words, even stories, all use abstract thought. This seems quite amazing, but in a place where needs can be satsfied as they arise, the abilty to plan ahead (which would necessitate both abstract thought and countiing) wouldn’t be as important as it would be to someone who has to deal with a snowy winter. I wonder if they have some abilities where they would outperform our and other cultures. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/6 "2006-04-29T20:00:47Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I wonder if they have some abilities where they would outperform our and other cultures. I hear they can skeletonize a cow in two minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/7 "2006-04-29T20:42:38Z")
Very interesting! I’m poking around a little, and it does seem that a long of linguists are very skeptical about the anthropologists’ claims about the Pirahã. I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude. On first blush, this seems to contradict some pretty well-established theories of innate linguistic abilities. I’m not scientist enough to figure out how to reconcile the two. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/8 "2006-04-29T20:45:33Z")
From the wiki article: > [@](#): > > The Pirahã are an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil who mainly live on the banks of the Maici River. They currently number about 200, which is sharply reduced from the numbers recorded in previous decades, and the culture is in danger of extinction. Sounds like they are a people going thru some devastating times, so that may explain the cause of their supposedly minimalist culture. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/9 "2006-04-29T20:55:13Z")
[This paper](http://ling.man.ac.uk/Info/staff/DE/culturalgrammar.pdf) (.pdf) addresses some of the issues of language vs culture that the anthropologists and linguists are fighting over. (It is openly anthropological in perspective.) What I notice about the discussions are that there appear to be only 150 - 200 people in the group and they have (apparently) remained monolingual despite a couple of hundred years of contact with both neighboring related ethnic groups and European invaders (which means that anyone studying them must learn their language as a second or third tongue (with all the pitfalls possible there) and must then “translate” both their ideas and experiences. I hope that this does not turn out to be something similar to the Tasaday hoax, but even if it is not, I am leery of accepting any grand philosophical precepts from the study of this group that is both tiny, odd, and with whom communication is extremely difficult. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/10 "2006-04-30T01:49:27Z")
I’ve been thinking about this. The fact that they trade with other groups implies some understanding of counting, doesn’t it. If I am trading fish for blankets, or vice versa, I need to be able to guage if the deal is a good one or not. Otherwise, one day I could trade a blanket for 40 fish, the next day, for one fish. So it seems they must be able to grasp some degree of counting. No? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/11 "2006-04-30T01:59:56Z")
I saw a TV documentary a few months ago hosted by Terry Jones about the history of counting systems. Amid the stories of Roman numerals and Indian zeroes, there was a brief tangent featuring the assertion that the Australian aborigine on screen had no way of counting higher than one. He made three lines in the sand, one to represent each of his grandchildren, and then said the word for the number in the group, which was translated as “many.” I didn’t buy it there, either. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/12 "2006-04-30T02:13:22Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > The fact that they trade with other groups implies some understanding of counting, doesn’t it. If I am trading fish for blankets, or vice versa, I need to be able to guage if the deal is a good one or not. Otherwise, one day I could trade a blanket for 40 fish, the next day, for one fish. According to the author of the paper to which I linked, this is not what happens. He describes the trade as one intended to bring in luxuries, not staples, and he describes the exchanges as pretty emotionally based. Since the Piraha are not attempting to secure necessary materials for their survival, they have no need to establish a rigorous standard of _quid pro quo_. I have no idea whether his observations are correct, but they appear to be the most current observations regarding the culture. It would be good to see a separate analysis of the situation. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/13 "2006-04-30T02:36:49Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Very interesting! I’m poking around a little, and it does seem that a long of linguists are very skeptical about the anthropologists’ claims about the Pirahã. True, still the results of the non-verbal matching tasks are consistent with something real and odd going on: > [@](#): > > The final two tasks (G and H) required participants to keep track of a numerical quantity through visual displacement. In one case, they were first allowed to inspect an array of nuts for about 8 s. The nuts were placed in a can, and then withdrawn one at a time. Participants were required to say, after each withdrawal, if there were still any nuts left in the can or if it was empty. Performance was predictably strongly affected by set size from the very smallest quantities. From Peter Gordon’s Oct. 2004 Science article; [Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia](http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:cZt02VWIoL8J:faculty.tc.columbia.edu/upload/pg328/GordonSciencePub.pdf+piraha+drawing+site:.edu&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2&client=firefox-a) ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/14 "2006-04-30T02:51:34Z")
Arn’t there plenty of cultures that lack numbers beyond a certain point? Arn’t there plenty of langages that don’t have a tense or two? I don’t see this as all that outlandish. No doubt they have some deep understanding of things that we don’t. For example, the Native Hawaiians used to know more about the fish in the area than all of our scientific study has taught us, but that knowledge faded when English started taking over. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/15 "2006-04-30T14:24:04Z")
This is a fascinating topic and to a large extent argues against Chomsky’s theory of strong “built in” grammars the human brain is disposed toward using. [The Wiki article is](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Linguistic_features) a bit more accessible than Tom’s linked anthro paper but is not updated (as far as I can tell) to reflect the linked paper. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/16 "2006-04-30T14:27:31Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > I hear they can skeletonize a cow in two minutes. ROFL That was great! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/17 "2006-04-30T14:47:15Z")
> [@astro](#): > > This is a fascinating topic and to a large extent argues against Chomsky’s theory of strong “built in” grammars the human brain is disposed toward using. > > [The Wiki article is](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Linguistic_features) a bit more accessible than Tom’s linked anthro paper but is not updated (as far as I can tell) to reflect the linked paper. One think I’m a bit confused about. The Wiki article seems to imply the actual field research was done over 25 years ago and that all this analysis is on that 26 year old dataset. Is this true? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/18 "2006-04-30T15:55:01Z")
> [@marginal prophet](#): > > Creation myths are not innate. One person in Sumer wrote the first one. Nearly a century went by before it was set to verse. Within a few months it rose to the top of the charts and was picked up by impressionable children wherever it was played. As it was translated it was modified, sometimes by simple misunderstanding. If it contained a number for example, like 7 days, then cultures without numbers would make hash of it. A couple of issues: “One person in Sumer wrote the first one.” The oldest recorded creation myth to have survived comes from Sumer, but an overwhelming body of evidence indicates that the scribe recorded a community tradition (i.e. he wasn’t an individual creative writer), and there is no reason to assume this was the first-ever creation myth. Every culture has some sort of origin narrative, even if it’s only “we come from France.” They don’t all worry about the origin of the universe, though. As for the farm folk with no myths, I’m afraid I have to express doubts. Christmas and Easter both involve the celebration of Christian myths, which often includes either a narrative or a ritual telling of these myths. I am using “myth” in the technical sense, so “sacred narrative” rather than “falsehood” or “religious-story-from-someone-else’s-religion.” ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-piraha-counting-language-and-culture/354705/19 "2006-05-01T17:48:18Z")
The fact that the Piraha tribe is native to the New World makes it hard to believe that their apparent deficiencies could be anything other than cultural in nature, and IMO even suggests the possibility that communication problems may be exaggerating their supposedly limited ability in abstract thought. Native Americans are fully modern humans, so it’s hard to imagine that the brains of this tribe could be functioning on such a simpler level than the rest of humanity. If somebody discovers a living population of “Hobbits”, presumably in some isolated region of Indonesia or the Phillipines, then we might see some real differences between them and us, but that’s certainly a remote possibility.