Yanomamo

[ yah-nuh-mah-moh ]

noun

, plural Ya·no·ma·mos, (especially collectively) Ya·no·ma·mo

1. a member of an Indigenous people of southern Venezuela and neighboring Brazil who live in scattered villages in the rain forests and conduct warfare against one another continually.
2. the family of languages spoken by the Yanomamo.

Example Sentences

Chagnon was famous for his studies of the Yanomamö people of Amazonia and his use of biology, rather than culture, to explain the violent conflicts he observed among them.

From Scientific American

This exchange was shortly after publication of journalist Patrick Tierney’s book Darkness in El Dorado, which accused Chagnon of inciting warfare and spreading a deadly measles epidemic among the Yanomamö.

From Scientific American

He studied the Yanomamö people of Amazonia.

From Scientific American

In this 2001 profile of Chagnon by Scientific American editor Kate Wong, the anthropologist responds to a book by journalist Patrick Tierney, published in 2000, that alleged, among other things, that Chagnon stoked violence among the Yanomamö to substantiate his ideas about human nature.

From Scientific American

In 2002 it accepted the task force’s report, which concluded that Chagnon’s characterization of the Yanomamö as the “fierce people” was a false and damaging and that he had acted unethically in the early 1990s in working with people connected to Venezuela’s then president Carlos Andres Pérez to get access to the Yanomamö after being denied a research permit by Venezuelan authorities.

From Scientific American