no joke

it’s the pokomo people (agriculturalists) vs. the orma people (pastoralists) this time. in kenya. they’ve fought before, so this is nothing new. but these people really do mean business:

nobody accidentally leaves a machete scar like that on a nine-month-old kid (orma kid, btw). i bet the person who did that meant to behead that child, they just missed.

this photo reminded me of a quote about the yanomamo that steven pinker had in Better Angels:

“Helena Valero, a woman who had been abducted by the Yanomamö in the Venezuelan rain forest in the 1930s, recounted one of their raids:

“‘Meanwhile from all sides the women continued to arrive with their children, whom the other Karawetari had captured…. Then the men began to kill the children; little ones, bigger ones, they killed many of them. They tried to run away, but they caught them, and threw them on the ground, and stuck them with bows, which went through their bodies and rooted them to the ground. Taking the smallest by the feet, they beat them against the trees and rocks…. All the women wept.’”

i can’t help but think that such peoples are gratified — on average — by committing such violent acts in a way (or ways) that other peoples simply are not. pinker talked at some length in Better Angels about how western soldiers have difficulties firing their weapons directly at enemy combatants [edit: or civilians - see comment below]. they’re repulsed by it. some peoples — like the pokomo and the yanomamo — don’t seem to be. at least not so much.

different evolutionary histories would be my guess (obviously!).

what is a joke is the way these things are written up in the msm:

Neighbors Kill Neighbors as Kenyan Vote Stirs Old Feuds

neighbors kill neighbors? gimme a break! this guy makes it sound like mr. jones went a little nuts one day and strangled mr. smith while they were chatting over the picket fence separating their front yards. westerners really need to start getting a grip on reality — and stop imagining that other people are just like us — if we’re ever going to understand what’s going on in the world at all!

_{(note: comments do not require an email. orma village sans picket fences.)}

linkfest – 04/22/12

Why Kenyans Make Such Great Runners: A Story of Genes and Cultures – somebody’s picked up on the phrase human biodiversity! check out the last sentence in paragraph two. (^_^) h/t to luke for pointing out the article to me!

Why Chimpanzees Kill – “[K]ills occurred in most of the chimpanzee communities and that victims tended to be infant and adult males outside the killer’s social group. Most of the killings were conducted by groups of males…. What did appear to be a factor was the number of males in a group: the higher the number of males in a group, the higher the number of kills.”

People prefer male politicians with lower voices – @the inductivist.

Analysis of surname origins identifies genetic admixture events undetectable from genealogical records – @race/history/evolution notes.

Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals – “Since early weaning yields shorter interbirth intervals and higher rates of reproduction, with profound effects on population dynamics, our findings highlight the emergence of carnivory as a process fundamentally determining human evolution.”

Women focus on their children, not their men, as they age – of course. @dennis’.

Women Are Twice As Likely To Hit The Gas By Mistake – that’d be pretty funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

bonus: When Memory Commits an Injustice – “[W]hen it comes to human memory, more deliberation is often dangerous.”

bonus bonus: Evolution seen in ‘synthetic DNA’ – “Researchers have succeeded in mimicking the chemistry of life in synthetic versions of DNA and RNA molecules. The work shows that DNA and its chemical cousin RNA are not unique in their ability to encode information and to pass it on through heredity.”

bonus bonus bonus: The Emergence and Early Evolution of Biological Carbon-Fixation – “Here we reconstruct the complete early evolutionary history of biological carbon-fixation, relating all modern pathways to a single ancestral form.”

_{(note: comments do not require an email. orwell court. heh.)}