This is rich. Jared Diamond, author of human-science best-seller Guns, Germs, and Steel, is a major figure in the “Culturist” school of writing about human differences — the school that insists natural selection among homo sap. stopped dead when we left Africa 50,000 or so years ago.
Well, back in April 2008 Diamond did a piece for The New Yorker, which is famous for its rigorous fact-checking. The piece concerned revenge amongst hunter-gatherer tribesmen in New Guinea, and offered some insights into the human hunger for revenge in general. One of Diamond’s New Guinea informants, Daniel Wemp, told of how he spent three years plotting, and at last getting, revenge in a blood feud.
The feud led to six battles and the deaths of 300 pigs, the story went. Finally, a hired thug shot Isum Mandingo, the man Wemp held responsible for Soll’s murder, in the back with an arrow, leaving him paralyzed and in a wheelchair, according to Diamond.
Turns out it was all bogus. Mandingo is walking around hale and hearty. Now the tribesmen are trying to get a lawsuit going against The New Yorker . . . by way of, I guess, revenge.