And the men spent their time partying, doing the local drugs, engaging in contests of physical skill such as wrestling or the famous "bungee" jumping of one tribe, and singing, dancing and plotting to kill their neighbors, while the women cared for the pigs and taro roots. The men who weren't killed and eaten are invariably shown - in photos going back to the 19th Century - as magnificent physical specimens, often looking like they just came from a body-building contest, even into their 60's or later, while the women who look as though they must be in their 60's or 80's are actually only 30 or so years old, having been literally worked to death, much like the carefully calculated starvation of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" death camps, but evolved from economic necessity rather than perverse ideology.
This is likely a pretty good example of what most of human pre-history was like. The men ran everything. The women were simply property, without status or culture of their own. Things that seem stupid, such as an absolute ignorance of the slightest concept of sanitation - taking a dump in the middle of the village, for example - make perfect sense if your goal is to limit population to those who have a strong immune system, while keeping the total population well within ecologically sustainable bounds.
The Vanuatans in many ways were RICH! At least the males... They worked very little, there was plenty of tasty food, entertainment, art, challenge. At the expense of the females, yes, who had miserable - you can tell it in their faces - lives, without question, but given that every one of the tribes settled into virtually the identical model of the lines I have sketched, while differing radically in many other aspects, the implication appears to be that this was at minimum a local optimum for rational use of resources.
BTW, the ritual cannibalism violence only ended because of WWI. Suddenly enormous numbers of dirt-cheap rifles came onto the world market at the close of the war, and the more affluent Vanuatans of course bought them and began to decimate their neighbors, to the point that the entire male population was being wiped out, which resulted in an unprecedented calling of a inter-tribal council which agreed that it was no longer possible to continue the old practice of "long pork" celebrations. And so, the cannibalism that for a hundred years the French and English were unable to extinguish was finally ended by the advent of guns.
Tell that one to your gun-abolishionist friends...
Part II - Tribal Violence
This is likely a pretty good example of what most of human pre-history was like. The men ran everything. The women were simply property, without status or culture of their own. Things that seem stupid, such as an absolute ignorance of the slightest concept of sanitation - taking a dump in the middle of the village, for example - make perfect sense if your goal is to limit population to those who have a strong immune system, while keeping the total population well within ecologically sustainable bounds.
The Vanuatans in many ways were RICH! At least the males... They worked very little, there was plenty of tasty food, entertainment, art, challenge. At the expense of the females, yes, who had miserable - you can tell it in their faces - lives, without question, but given that every one of the tribes settled into virtually the identical model of the lines I have sketched, while differing radically in many other aspects, the implication appears to be that this was at minimum a local optimum for rational use of resources.
BTW, the ritual cannibalism violence only ended because of WWI. Suddenly enormous numbers of dirt-cheap rifles came onto the world market at the close of the war, and the more affluent Vanuatans of course bought them and began to decimate their neighbors, to the point that the entire male population was being wiped out, which resulted in an unprecedented calling of a inter-tribal council which agreed that it was no longer possible to continue the old practice of "long pork" celebrations. And so, the cannibalism that for a hundred years the French and English were unable to extinguish was finally ended by the advent of guns.
Tell that one to your gun-abolishionist friends...