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Anthropologists pretending to be cowboys

Kind of a harsh title for a post, but that’s really how I see this entry over on Savage Minds. To be fair, it’s really hard to feign badassness when your profession’s standard issue gear is the notebook from Blue’s Clues and maybe a kinship chart. That doesn’t strike fear into the heart of anyone.

Although that gets me thinking: how freaking hard would it be to scare a hunter-gatherer? I mean on one hand, maybe you could just brandish an iPhone, and the villagers would either worship you or kill you for channeling demons. But that would happen in any Soviet Bloc country, too, and probably more likely there than in Papua New Guinea.

If you spend your entire life trying to kill shit without a gun, and you live in the jungle and get chased by tigers and maybe the occasional dragon, you’re probably going to be tough as hell. I mean, I’m a pale computer geek and even I was never impressed by John Wayne. You know?

So anyway, in the spirit of the Savage Minds post, I’d offer these tentative rules for an anthropologist’s code:

1. Lie
2. Publish
3. Repeat

At least, that’s how I understand the field thus far.