ted when the sky fell to earth on top of a particular settlement, and pushed it down through to the underside; the people of the settlement were forced to eat each other. The belief that souls are regularly carried off to be eaten below reflects the Yanomamo’s fear of cannibalism. The soul plays a central part in the spiritual world of the Yanomamo. The soul consists of two pieces the one that continues into the afterlife and the one that is freed upon cremation and lives in the jungle. The Yanomamo believe that after death on the way to topmost layer they come to a fork guarded by a spirit which directs them which way to go guided by the generosity shown by soul’s mortal owner. They believe that if directed to the underworld, they can lie out of it and go down the preferred route. The only type of leadership is that of the headman whose main purpose is to host visitors. In the Yanomamo culture, it is commonplace and expected behavior that women are physically disciplined by their husbands for almost any infraction ranging from being too slow with the preparation of food to suspected infidelity, such punishment for these infractions can be murder. The Yanomamo are a violent culture, but yet in attempts to avoid warfare, males often enter formalized duels of chest pounding and side-slapping, the Yanomamo are often on hallucinogens during such encounters. The duels can escalate into fighting with clubs, which are actually ten-foot poles with one end sharpened to a point. True warfare begins when one village raids another and kills as many of the enemy as possible and escape without being detected. Another such way of warfare is nomobori, dastardly trick. During this men from a village say they received machetes and cooking pots by praying to a previously unknown spirit and once the other village’s men kneel down and bow their heads, the raiders hack them to death with the machetes and take the village’s...
