Dan Everett:
The language of culture, happiness and hostility

American linguist and author Dan Everett shares his personal story working with the Pirahã people, a remote Brazilian Amazonian tribe, and how they are challenging everything we know about human language. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #7 which focused on the theme ‘Enlightened self-interest’.

Kevin Finn: Over 30 years ago you went to a remote corner of the Brazilian Amazon as a Christian missionary to convert the Pirahã, a tribe of around 400 people. Remarkably, they converted you. How did they manage to do this? What was so powerful, so compelling about their beliefs and way of life that it made you an atheist?

Dan Everett: The first thing you have to do as a Christian missionary is tell people they have a saviour. But in the case of the Pirahã, it just wasn’t clear that they had anything to be saved from. Of course, one can talk about the problems of sickness, etc, but I’ve described the Pirahã as a very peaceful people, and that’s correct. But everybody has exceptions, every society has exceptions.

Overall, the people were just very laid back, self-sufficient and happy, and it made very little sense for me to start telling them they were lost, except from the theological perspective. But as I thought about it more, there were two things that really profoundly affected me. The first was this contentment and happiness, which I witnessed, but also their demand for evidence. If I told them something about Jesus, they expected that I had actually seen Jesus. That I had real direct evidence from the things that I was talking about. Otherwise, I wouldn’t talk to them about it, right?

They came to me once and asked: “Hey, Dan. Is Jesus brown like us or is he white like you?” I said, “Well, some people say he was brown and some people say he was white.”

To which they replied: “But you saw him, so what was he?” I said, “Well, I’ve never talked to him.” They said: “Well, your father must have seen him.” “No, my father never saw him.” “Well, who saw him?” The answer, of course, was, “I know of no one who’s ever seen him.” For them, it just didn’t make any sense.

As I thought about that, and considering I was not a Christian all my life, these things really made me reflect on the people and on the mission that I had gone there to carry out. It just didn’t seem to make a lot of sense for me to continue to try to ‘missionize’ them. More importantly, as I looked around and saw a lot of Christians—in churches in the United States, in churches in Brazil, in the missionary group that I was with, and many other contexts—I really didn’t see anybody that was living a life I thought was any better than the Pirahã. These things all made me eventually go down a series of questions and answers that led me to abandon my faith.

From an objective point of view it seems to suggest you were somehow enlightened by their questions. And, on the other hand, the Pirahã are actually quite scientific about how they approach things, that they look for the evidence.

Yes, they are very empirical.

Was there a long time frame in which you changed, or was it a very abrupt change?

It was a long time frame. It started in the early 80s. It took about 20 years for me to come around to say that I, really, don’t believe anymore. If you’re a missionary, the consequences of saying that you don’t believe are unemployment and loss of relationships. It’s not something you do lightly. 20 years may seem like a long time, but whenever I would doubt, I would try very hard not to doubt.

That’s self preservation, I guess?

Yeah.

Many would argue that language preserves culture. Although the Pirahã have recently begun to learn Portuguese, they generally only speak their own language, which I believe is unusual among Amazonian tribes. You’re one of the few people who speak Pirahã fluently. One of the most fascinating aspects about the Pirahã language is how it can be communicated; their language can be spoken, hummed, sung, or whistled. How is it possible to sing and hum a language?

The reason that it’s easier for the Pirahã to do this is that their language is tonal. The pitches on the vowels, whether the vowel is a high pitch or a low pitch, are very easy to whistle. When you combine that with the syllable structure of the language, and the general intonation and a number of other characteristics that use pitch, and length and loudness, you’re able to whistle an entire phrase. They can follow you fine without context. They can communicate anything by whistling, or humming or these other ways that we can with consonants and vowels.

Amazing! Can you yourself hum, whistle or sing the Pirahã language, or just speak it?

I speak it well, but I don’t do those other things very well. If I do, they laugh. They think it’s funny that I’m doing this. If they start whistling or humming, they can lose me very easily, very quickly.

[Laughing] I believe the Pirahã don’t have any words for colours or numbers, and they don’t have any words for past or future tense. Research from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) suggests the Pirahã are the only culture in the world without numeracy. Aside from being a fascinating fact, is there a deeper significance to those findings?

Yes. I’ve tried to explain all of this based on a single principle that I’ve called the, Immediacy of Experience Principle. There’s a very long, and involved and technical explanation of how this works. But the simple form of it is that they don’t generalize more than they absolutely have to. Numbers are generalizations. It’s not crucial to generalize like that so they simply don’t. It goes beyond the things they experience.

For example, lets take white. White is an abstraction. Black is an abstraction. We call lots of things white: if you put all of them next to each other, they’re not exactly the same colour. For the Pirahã, they describe things as they see them. “This is clear.” “This is clean.” “This looks like water.” “This looks like a leaf”—in terms of colour.

In terms of numbers, it’s also an abstraction to say three potatoes versus three fish. In other words, you’ve got this characteristic, “three”, which goes beyond my experience. It applies to a range of possible circumstances they haven’t yet experienced.

That said, they can generalize. They have the word dog, which refers to all dogs. That’s a generalization. It’s not that they don’t generalize. It’s that they don’t generalize more than communication absolutely requires of them.

It’s pretty efficient, and pretty economical.

Yeah. It’s a very economical language, in that sense and in terms of the range of things they talk about, and the shortness of their sentences. Things are more concrete in some senses.

Of course, spoken language is integral to identity, but how important is visual language, considering the Pirahã have no words for colours? Do they have a particular visual language?

They have gestures, but they don’t represent things in two dimensional space except for stick figures. They don’t do drawings. They rarely do things like diagram maps on the ground. “You go here and I’ll go there”—they don’t represent things that way.

Their spoken language is very important. Their gestures are very important. Everything around them is mapped to an internal map. They not only know the jungle very well, but every part of the jungle has names. You wonder how they give can each other such precise directions to go places when they can’t say: “The third turn at the third path, or turn at the second river you come to.” They don’t say things like that. But everything: every body of water, every path, all of these things have names. They can tell each other, with great precision, where to be. But it requires that their local environment is almost completely memorized and mapped in everyone’s head.

Again, that’s pretty amazing. One of the most unusual aspects of the Pirahã language is its grammar. It seems to challenge what is believed to be a fundamental rule of human language, which is recursion. Can you explain recursion in brief detail?

Recursion is a mathematical computational concept and one could get quite complicated with it. If you see a matryoshka doll—a Russian doll where one small doll goes inside a slightly larger doll, which goes inside a slightly larger doll—then that’s recursion. That’s putting one thing inside another thing of the same type.

In essence, it relates to taking a word and putting it with another word to form a larger word. Take the word “truckdriver.” “Truckdriver” is made up of the word “truck” and the word “drive.” But it’s bigger than that. Putting the two words together makes this third word. I have a word “truckdriver” that has two smaller words, “truck” and “drive” inside it. That’s recursion.

Equally, I can say: “John’s house.” That’s a noun phrase with a possessor and a thing possessed. I can say: “John’s house,” or I can say: “John’s brother’s House.” Or: “John’s brother’s, sister’s, mother’s, father-in-law’s, cousin’s house.” Those are all putting one noun phrase inside of another. Those are all recursion.

Another example, I can say: “John spoke,” or I can say: “John said that Mary spoke,” in which Mary spoke is a sentence inside the larger sentence: “John said that.”

The ability to do this enables us to pack a lot of information into single sentences, when you start getting nouns that are recursive, inside phrases that are recursive, inside sentences that are recursive.

In a 2001 paper, Noam Chomsky [who was interviewed in Open Manifesto #4], Marc Hauser and Tecumseh Fitch said that recursion is the fundamental biological foundation for language that only humans have. However, Pirahã doesn’t seem to have any evidence for recursion in the grammar like this. They can think recursively, which is an interesting story. And it’s possible to see this when they tell a long story; you’ll get one idea inside of another idea. That’s thinking recursively, but it isn’t grammatically recursive.

They could say something like: “Once upon a time,” and then everything that follows is part of this larger story. But it’s not part of the grammar. The fact that Pirahã lacks that characteristic drew a lot of attention to the language. And there have been a lot of experiments done.

The experimenters-—who feature in the film The Grammar of Happiness—Ted Gibson and Steve Piantadosi, both at MIT, are actively, finally, finishing a paper to prove this. It should be out before too long.

This paper will be backed up with over 200 pages of text, the very text that they were analyzing in the film. This will be presented publicly. Why is that important? This is independent confirmation—if, of course they agree with me about the things that I have been arguing for, which is that recursion cannot be the basis of human language. In all my work over the last couple of years, I have argued that language is created in part by our culture. You can never understand any grammar unless you understand the culture in which it’s embedded.

Why is that so radical?

For the average non-linguist, that’s not radical because it makes common sense. And I think that it’s right. People would say things like: “This culture raises cattle, therefore their language looks like this.” Or: “This culture eats sushi so their language looks like this.” They put the object before the verb.

But there are a lot of silly claims out there. And linguists spent a lot of time showing how these weren’t really precise claims and that they didn’t make a lot of sense. The received wisdom, after a period of time, among all linguists and even many anthropologists, was that it had been decisively shown that culture and language were entirely separate except for words. Sure, there’s a word for haggis in Scots Gaelic. But there’s not a word for ‘haggis’ in Portuguese unless you use the actual word ‘haggis’ because Brazilians don’t eat haggis. Nobody denied that. But many people, most people even, still deny that there’s a greater link to culture in language than just the words.

I’ve just tried to show that, sure, those original arguments and some of things that people say were slightly left field. But there are a lot of other ways to look at this, not just in terms of the words, but in terms of how we talk. What do we talk about? How do we relate to one another? How long do we expect sentences to be? All of these things can be shown to link to culture, and it does give you a picture that language is partially shaped by culture. And at the same time, language shapes culture.

I’ve called it a ‘symbiosis’; each one forms the other. It’s not a chicken or egg problem. You start learning language on its own, you start learning culture on its own. Babies learn culture from the time they’re in the womb. At some point, the learning of culture and learning of language come together. When you go to school, you’re taught a lot about your culture through language.

You’re also taught it through the ways that your friends dress, the things that they eat, the way they smell, the way they relate to one another, how much they touch one another. Those are all very important parts of culture. How long does one person talk? How long is considered polite for one person to talk? What are the kinds of relationships that determine how conversation will be structured? These are just things that are absorbed in their cultural values.

One of your greatest frustrations is the lack of scientific attitude towards your work. There doesn’t seem to be a proper exchange of ideas in this particular issue, which one would actually expect from universities and science. What are they afraid of?

There are two things. On a personal level, people are irritated that anybody gets any—or a lot—of publicity. That seems to be some human issue, because everybody thinks their work is important. And it is! But they wonder why you get publicity, and they don’t. Although this is one reason, it has nothing to do with the scientific debate. But it’s a real factor in some of the anger.

The other issue is the significance [Noam] Chomsky has with a lot of people, because of his political and linguistic views. Chomsky said: “All people have X,” in recursion. I come along and say, “These people [the Pirahã] don’t have X.” There are two conclusions you could draw from that. One, Chomsky is wrong, or I’m wrong—or I’m saying that the Pirahã aren’t humans. Since Chomsky says: “All people have X,” therefore, I must be saying the Pirahãa are not humans. This is where it can get sensitive and people would prefer to believe there’s no debate here. I’m either lying, or a racist. They just dismiss me for any number of personal reasons. I’m very pleased to know researchers like Ted Gibson and Steve Piantadosi aren’t going to believe my arguments just because I say it. But they think it’s worth looking at. They’re undertaking this long research project that’s finally coming to fruition with a paper.

I find it very difficult to understand how you can be accused of being racist simply for proposing an idea about linguistics that may be radical and contrary to mainstream thinking. How is that racist?

Well, it can be interpreted that I’m saying: “The Pirahã language is somehow primitive because it lacks recursion.” Of course, I’m not saying that it’s primitive. I’m saying, through structural values, they’ve determined to structure their language in this particular way—and it’s a fairly sophisticated way of structuring your language. I’m not saying the language is primitive or that they’re cognitively deficient in any way. People just have this knee-jerk reaction, that if the sentences of the language are simpler the people must be stupider. But that doesn’t follow at all.

Considering Noam Chomsky is a professor at MIT and clearly your most staunch critic, it’s ironic that the MIT researchers you’ve mentioned are helping, or looking to prove that your claims may be valid. It’s entirely possible that they will find recursion may not actually be the foundation of universal grammar.

Well, they’re not in the same department as Chomsky. Chomsky is in linguistics and their primary base is in brain and cognitive sciences.

I believe the initial research that the researchers have done has been dismissed outright by Professor Chomsky. Yet, now you’ve got what I would assume to be a credible, clear document being published. So, is Professor Chomsky dismissing this research out of self-interest, or do you think there might be a credible reason for his skepticism?

Chomsky has made a statement and he believes that language is this way. Perhaps in his mind, if I’m saying that it’s not actually this way, I can’t possibly know what I’m talking about. Chomsky doesn’t believe that culture has any effect whatsoever on grammar—as he defines grammar. He doesn’t believe that there can be a language like the one I’m describing, even though he’s never done field research or anything remotely like field research. Chomsky has been through a lot of debates in the last 50 plus years, and he’s won most of them. I don’t think he’s inclined to take critics particularly seriously. I’ve known Chomsky personally for over 28 years, not that well, but my office was very close to his at MIT when I was a visitor there and we talked frequently. He’s very convinced that he’s right and that’s the main motivation.

Will the publication of this paper change things for you?

I don’t know what they’re going to say in the paper. I have a sense of what they might say because they’re using data that I know very well. The main thing is that people believe this is turning into a scientific debate and ceases to be name calling.

Whether Chomsky and his closest circle agrees or is convinced is hard to say, but it’s unlikely that they would be. The interesting thing about the reactions from Chomsky’s side is that when this first came out they said that I had to be lying. Then they tried to say that I’m completely wrong, so they published articles criticizing me. The third thing they’re saying is: “He’s right, but it’s totally irrelevant.” Now there they are saying something new: “Even though all languages are built on recursion there can be exceptions, so Pirahã is just an exception.”

But that doesn’t really follow because, if you say: “Every swan is white” and then I present a black swan, that’s not just an exception that’s a counterexample. That means not every swan is white. They’re trying to get away from the consequences of the clear claim that Chomsky made when they said: “It’s irrelevant.” They remove it from all empirical foundation.

One of your Brazilian linguist colleagues suggests that the reaction against your work will be described as: “Science becoming religion, where believers will not listen to an alternative proposition and nothing can be questioned.” This is ironic considering your own past with religion. How can you overcome this fervor for support of Chomsky’s initial claim on universal grammar, because you must be acutely aware of the power of religious belief?

Absolutely. The fervor comparisons with religion are, indeed, very strong. One of the reasons I’ve accepted so many invitations and traveled so much, when I would rather be home with my wife, is that by doing this, talking and answering questions from anybody—even the severest critics—people can start to take this work seriously. Not that they believe it, but they say: “This is a scientific proposal. This isn’t silly. We have to think about this.” It’s irrelevant what they think of me as a person. But scientifically, it needs to be seen as an important lesson that this language brings for our understanding of what it means to be human. For people to ignore this is to pass up an opportunity to understand the world better.

Your work seems to go well beyond a self-interest because of its wider impact and potentially the benefit that science will gain from this new query, questioning, finding, and fact. It seems that your approach is far beyond your own interest.

Yeah. It was beyond my interest when I first wrote the paper. I found these things out and I could have written on any number of things. My view was: “OK, I’ve been here long enough now. I need to set all of these things down that make Pirahã seem so different to me from other languages that I know of as a linguist.”

So I published that in the journal Current Anthropology and The University of Chicago Press—who operates the journal—determined that it was an interesting paper, so they issued a press release. All authors would like to think they could control interest in what they do, but nobody in fact does. You have no say over who’s going to take up your story and talk about it. That there’s been publicity about this issue is simply a reflection of the fact that some people think it’s interesting. It has nothing to do with self promotion or anything like that.

According to Valmir Parintintin—the regional coordinator of the FUNAI agency, which is responsible for Brazil’s indigenous tribes—one of the greatest threats to the Pirahã are the missionaries. How do you respond to this, considering you yourself arrived initially as a missionary?

He’s right. I agree with him. But he’s trying to say that I’m still a missionary, and he knows very well I’m not. One thing that the film couldn’t bring out, for obvious reasons, is that Valmir told me on the side that if I would give him a brand new Toyota four-wheel-drive pickup, with a value of about US$75,000, he would let me go back into the area where the Pirahã live. But I’m not going to do that—even if I had the money. Still, I agree that missionaries can produce very negative effects.

Missionaries, especially those who are fundamentalist evangelical protestant, may be in a situation where they’re giving medicine and keeping people alive, and nobody else is there. Alternatively, you can kick everybody out because you don’t agree with them. But you have to make sure that you do a careful evaluation of what’s left in its place, and make sure that the people’s needs are being met. With respect to the Pirahã, the FUNAI, which Valmir is in charge of, doesn’t have anything to do with their medical health. That’s another government agency and they visit about every 30 days to perform checks on the health of the people. The agent visits and stays a couple of days, then leaves.

What Valmir has done, which you see in the film, in terms of bringing in generators, and building a school, etc, is of tremendously questionable value. There some shots of Pirahã children smiling at the end of the film—and they have cavities. Pirahã never had cavities before this. Some of the Pirahã men in the film have gained 15 to 20 pounds in weight since I last saw them because of FUNAI coming in.

These are health issues. And I’m happy to see a school—to a certain extent—although I had a school for a couple of years, and taught them in Pirahã. But they eventually decided this was not part of their culture, and they did not want to continue with it. It’s really not my responsibility to make decisions for the Brazilian government, but I do get really concerned about what I see as exploitation, and the wrong kind of help.

It is interesting, though, because the Pirahã have successfully resisted outside influence for so long. Clearly, something must have shifted for them to accept outsiders—even FUNAI—bringing in these additional things to their way of life.

FUNAI was never interested in the Pirahã until I started gaining more attention. This is one of the bad effects of the publicity. I tried for years to get FUNAI to help the Pirahã medically, because I was doing what I could. But I wasn’t able to stay there year round, and I would try to get the FUNAI to come in and give shots, vaccinations, and this sort of thing. But they never would, because they didn’t speak the language.

Finally, just in the last few years, because they met me, and they saw me coming and going a lot to the Pirahã, the FUNAI decided to move in there. But they didn’t ask the Pirahã: “Can we come here?” They just moved in, and they brought in all of this stuff. The Pirahã were not fully consulted. And if you stop and think about it, they couldn’t have been consulted—because they don’t speak Portuguese.

Yes, I was going to ask about that.

A few of the men can carry on very simple conversations It’s the equivalent of me, for example, finding my way to the bathroom at the Eiffel Tower in France. I don’t speak French, but I know enough so that I could probably find the toilet. FUNAI’s involvement was not something the Pirahã were consulted on, and they don’t have any way of knowing what the long term consequences of this could be. But I do think that this change has come, and it will produce more changes. There’s no question now that the Pirahã have gone over a threshold—and there’s no easy way back from it.

By the sounds of things, all this has impacted their culture. I picked up a particular phrase from the film, which the Pirahã often say: “I almost begin to want that,” which suggests they don’t hold much value for material possessions. There has been, as you say, a threshold-crossing where all of a sudden perhaps material possession, or practical tools and possessions, might actually now be accepted.

Yes, and part of the issue is that the government comes in and gives them these things. Nobody has worked for it, or anything like that, they’re just given all these things. They’re given cookies, they’re given white rice, they’re given fishhooks.

The Pirahã don’t need charity, they’re not poor. People see the way they live, and if they don’t have any kind of ethnographical, ethnological background, they think the Pirahã are poor people. But the concept of poverty did not even exist among the Pirahã. They had everything they needed, and they were extremely happy—and well off. These things, which have now been given to them, has created addictions. And you can see it in North America, here in the United States, in particular. This is how we acted 100 years ago, and it produced a lot of very negative effects.

It’s consistent with pretty much most indigenous cultures where—not just a ‘white’ or a colonization style impact on culture, but an outside influence—brings all of these supposed trinkets, and gifts. But they’re loaded with an agenda, and introduced without any consideration. And the impact on that culture is irreversible. Is this something that you’re seeing with FUNAI?

Yes, there’s going to be a major shift in the history of the Pirahã.

That’s sad. But I guess the alternative—as noble as it might sound—is to want the Pirahã to exist in a glass case, untouched, while the rest of the world changes. But is that irresponsible of us?

No, I don’t say that. First of all, it really is their decision—not mine. Nobody has a crystal ball, I can’t see how the decisions I make today are really going to work out in several years, and so I don’t expect them to be able to do that, either. It’s their decision, and every culture changes like this. I buy things from other countries. But my biggest concern is the way it’s being done, and the way it’s being done is to create a need for capitalist culture without teaching the people.

If you’re going to give people this insatiable desire for capitalist goods, you’ve got to teach them a little bit about the other side of capitalism. If you don’t earn these things, you’re dependent on someone else to give them to you. This is the way it’s being done. But again, it’s easy for me to say this from the outside. I truly love the Pirahã and I trust their wisdom. They’re going to do what they think is right, and it’s their job to make that choice, not mine.

Speaking of other indigenous cultures, in Australian Aboriginal culture land and place are inseparably linked. In your opinion, is environment a key factor for indigenous languages, and can language actually be altered if the location changes? For example, an indigenous group moving to a town, or a city.

As I mentioned earlier, the Pirahã don’t have numbers, they don’t have ways of getting around, so within their environment everything is mapped out. If you suddenly take them out of that environment, for example to the city, where nothing is mapped out in their head, they’re going to be totally lost for a while. They have to figure out how to navigate cognitively and physically, through a completely foreign environment. It would be like if you just took me out of Boston and dropped me in the middle of the Antarctic, I would be totally lost, I’d probably die before I found myself.

Plus, aside from physically and cognitively, they don’t have the language to navigate that space, either.

Right! Their language developed for a particular culture, and that culture developed for a particular place. If you move from the place, you change the cultural basis; you break the link between culture and place, and then you start to affect the link between language and culture, because now this language has to function in a very different environment, where the culture is no longer completely adequate, because they don’t have these mental maps anymore.

Dr. Knut J. Olawsky is a German linguist working in Western Australia, specializing in language documentation, field linguistics, and endangered languages. According to him, he believes our language is defined by the environment we live in, including nature, culture, and social structures. He goes on to ask: “How do we keep our culture alive if we don’t have the words to describe it?” This seems to support what you are saying, particularly in the context of how the Pirahã language has evolved. It is tied in with the context of the environment, the nature of where it is, and the social structures around it.

I completely agree with that statement. My son—Caleb Everett, who is now an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Miami—has done a lot of work recently on the connection between altitude, and climate, and the languages that we speak. In fact, his work is getting a lot of attention, too.

And his research is something else that linguists have considered to be impossible. But he’s done samples of hundreds of languages and shown there are direct correlations between altitude and climate, with just the consonants and vowels we use.

The first article he wrote has been reported on in lots of media. And he’s got another article, a bigger one, coming out with a geographer, a professor and the medical school at the University of Miami, trying to explain the physiology and the relationship to climate, and how this affects the way we talk. This is something that linguists have also never thought to be a plausible possibility.

If we return to what you were saying earlier, about capitalism and how that might affect things, Dr. Olawsky also suggests our world is so clearly dominated by economy, wealth, and personal success, and that people are keen to acquire the language of the day, even at the cost of sacrificing their own language. Considering the Pirahã culture, and their resistance to outside influences, how is it likely that they will adopt Portuguese, or another language in place of their own?

Look at any language: Gaelic Irish, American Indian languages, etc. Languages tend to disappear because people exchange short term economic goals for long term cultural well being. We all do that. English is the trade language of the world right now, because of the economic power of the United States of America, Australia, and the UK. But if China becomes much more powerful, if they ascend to that level of dominance, then it’s very possible that Mandarin will become the most powerful language. People look for quality of life in the short term, and very few of us are able to think very intelligently about the long view.

Your estimation of the Pirahã population is around 700. My concern is that, with all this outside influence, along with the impact on their culture, it might begin to create divisions within the people, pull them away from their land and culture. The result would be a sudden decimation of the Pirahã. Would you agree?

Well they’re basically very sturdy. The fact they’re now getting regular vaccinations against all the outside diseases, which used to kill them, is a good thing. For example they are vaccinated against measles, and they also get treated when they get a common cold. A common cold for a Pirahã could be deadly. They also get treatment for infections and malaria, another big killer.

Now that the government—not the FUNAI, but the health agency—is wiping these things out, the people are better off in terms of disease, though not necessarily in terms of cavities and being in physical shape, and that sort of thing. But they’re generally doing better than ever.

Do you think that—because of the nature of their language and how it’s linked with their surrounding environment and their culture, and in context of how they live—perhaps this might actually protect them. As you said earlier, to remove them from their specific environment to a new place, they’d be lost. Perhaps there language will protect them, encouraging them to stay where they are—and thrive where they are. Do you think that’s possible?

It’s possible. Their language is a very powerful cultural force, but you know, they’re in a situation, as I’ve said, which they’ve never been in before. So it’s really difficult to determine. Outsiders might visit. But, often what happens is they bring in a generator, and you film it while there. But then it runs out of fuel two days later, and they don’t use it again for another seven months.

Due to this the effect is going to be mitigated tremendously. But to the degree that the government is visiting frequently, and doing things that are unlike Pirahã culture, and not really fitting with Pirahã values, the changes are going to be much more difficult to protect. And likely more profound.

I’ll finish on, perhaps, a bigger question: Considering the environmental crisis we all face, many argue that it is in our own interest—and in the interest of every living plant and animal—to actively learn and implement aspects of indigenous cultures. For example, the Pirahã have no buildings. I realise this may have changed since the FUNAI have come in, but generally their culture is to have no buildings. They have no cultivation, or agriculture. They rely totally on nature, and live in complete unison with their surroundings. As you mentioned earlier, they know every species of flora and fauna that surrounds them, and they live entirely in the present—and they appear to be very happy about that fact. Is it realistic for modern society to incorporate some aspects of that way of life? Is it even practical?

It is, but you can’t just do this in a superficial way. You have to really understand these cultures. If they disappear we lose the opportunity to understand them. But I would say the greatest lesson of the Pirahã, which can be easily learned, is self sufficiency. There are so many lessons. Every single language culture pairing on the face of the earth—and there are over 7,000—has learned to cope with the world and has been very effective. Otherwise, they would be dead. They’ve solved problems and come up with philosophies, and classifications of nature that are all of value. As these disappear, we lose opportunity to collect information that can be very important for our species. Information from each one of these pairings has taken centuries to develop, and they’re a far greater resource for our survival as humans than any other thing in nature—I’m sure of it. We need to study them. We need to learn the lessons they have to teach us. And we have lessons for them, as well. We need to help them learn to navigate through these changes. It’s a mutual relationship.

I did say I was going to finish on that question, but one last question has just come to mind. You’re going to have a paper published. It’s likely that paper will include evidence to support your claims about language, and recursion, and universal grammar. If all this is accepted, even by your critics, you are possibly are on the cusp of changing our understanding of human language, forever. Are you prepared for that?

I’m prepared in the sense that, it’s the Pirahã’s language which would be affecting this. I’m just a reporter.

Though, I guess it’s actually more than that. I had to figure out the language, and how it works, and this is difficult work. But there are hundreds of linguists studying other languages around the world, and those people are learning things of no less significance than the Pirahã. One of the problems with linguistic theories being done at large universities, and by people who don’t do much field research, is that they get a very myopic view of what humans are like, and what languages are like. All these languages have profound things to teach us. They should all affect our understanding of human language. Pirahã is a very exciting case, because it has so many interesting things in that one language. But there are plenty of other languages, and lots of other linguists working just as hard as I ever did, to make these facts known. And we really need to know what those languages can teach us.

Image credits

Dan Everett portrait photography by David Levene

Pirahã man [no photography credit provided]

Pirahã group photogrpah by Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress

Pirahã children sourced here