Peter Farb Quotes

What most impresses the people around the prophet is the personality change he has undergone. ...when stress reaches a certain intensity in the culture, only certain individuals feel called forth to become prophets while most do not. In any event, the prophet has emerged in a new cultural role, and his personality is liberated from the stress that called his response into being in the first place. Immune to the stress under which his brethren still suffer, he must appear to them supernatural.

The debate as to where "magic" ends and "religion" begins is an old one, and it appeared to have been settled some decades ago when scholars concluded that no discernible boundary was to be found. As a result, the two were often lumped together in the adjective "magico-religious"...

Following the War of 1812, the young United States had no further need for Indian allies against the British, and as a result the fortunes of the Indians declined rapidly. By 1848, twelve new states had been carved out of the Indian's lands, two major and minor Indian wars had been fought, and group after group of Indians had been herded westward, on forced marches, across the Mississippi River.

In 1830... Joseph Smith... prophesied that a New Jerusalem would arise in the wilds... The Mormons sent emissaries to the Indians, whom he renamed the Lamanites, inviting them to join the Mormon colonies and to be baptized. Joseph Smith was also to have prophesied in 1843 that if he... lived until 1890—the messiah would appear in human form. ...It was in 1890 that... Wovoka appeared and began teaching the [revitalized] Ghost Dance religion.

There are strong parallels between the hope for salvation of the Jews and the hopes of the Indians who followed native prophets, between the early Christian martyrs and the Indian revolts against United States authority, between the Hebrew and the [native American] Indian prophets. ...the Jews and early Christians have served as models for oppressed peoples from primitive cultures... Almost everywhere the White missionary has penetrated, primitive people have borrowed from his bible those elements in which they saw a portrayal of their own plight...They regard the arrest and execution of a native on charges of being a rebel against White authority in the same terms as the trials undergone by the Hebrew prophets or the passion of Jesus.

The Whites were in full control ... remnants were shifted about again and again... All of which led Sioux chief Spotted Tail, grown old and wise, to ask the weary question: "Why does not the Great Father put his red children on wheels, so he can move them as he will?"

After the Spaniards settled the Southwest, the Navajo began another burst of cultural borrowing—or, more actually, stealing. Spanish ranches and villages were so depleted of horses—not to mention sheep—that by 1775 the Spaniards had to send to Europe for 1,500 additional horses. After the Pueblo Rebellion against the Spaniards was put down in 1692, many Pueblo took refuge with their Navajo neighbors—and taught them how to weave blankets, a skill for which the Navajo are still noted, and to make pottery. During this time the Navajo probably absorbed many Pueblo religious and social ideas and customs as well, such as ceremonial paraphernalia and possibly the Pueblo class system.

About 1932 one of Sapir's students at Yale, Benjamin Lee Whorf drew on Sapir's ideas and began an intensive study of the language of the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Whorf's brilliant analysis... seemed to support the view that man is a prisoner of his language. Whorf emphasized grammar—rather than vocabulary, which had previously intrigued scholars—as an indicator of the way a language can direct a speaker into certain habits of thought.

Experiments... have shown that at least one aspect of human thought—memory—is strongly influenced by language.

The environment does not determine the character of human culture; it merely sets the outer limits.

An incestuous marriage establishes no new bonds between unrelated groups; it is an absurd denial to the right to increase the number of people whom one can trust. Marriages in simple societies are... usually alliances between families rather than romantic arrangements between individuals.

Balanced reciprocity is as much a social compact as it is an economic advantage. It is particularly important in hunting-gathering societies, where no individual could possibly accumulate a surplus, live independently of other members of the band, or become so successful in the quest for food as never to need meat from someone else's kill.

The culture of the Anasazi is still the best known of all prehistoric southwestern cultures. ...Their architecture... is distinctly their own, and unique among all the southwestern cultures.

If you read Peter Farb's book, Man's Rise of Civilization, he goes through all these different cultures at first contact, and they very often figure out in very different ways, but typically the things that were in common among them, were that the idea of the accumulation of private property beyond your needs was considered a mental illness.

The astonishing cluster of them [geniuses] that appeared in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. ...what changed was the culture, which allowed exceptional minds to flourish.