The Yanomamo

We watched a documentary on The Yanomamo tribe. They are a tribe on the Venezuelan, Brazilian border. We learned about a girl from the tribe her name is Yarima and she was promised to an ethnographer Ken Goode at the age of ten. He was a thirty six year old man and she was just ten. They ended up marrying and having three kids. I was shocked to hear of this tradition. She was only ten and it was even more appaling that an American promised to marry her. You watch her struggles away from home when she moves with Ken to New Jersey. It was fascinating to see how lost she felt, because things at the Yanomamo tribe are completely different. She wore spears through her face and hunted, most ran around barely clothed. However, what the documentary focused on was the Cultural Universal: marriage. It is present in all cultures, but so different. You can see the huge difference here in America if a thirty six yearold man tried to mary a ten year old it would not go over smoothly. He would most likely have gotten arrested had he been in the United States. It made me see though, that marriage really is a Cultural Universal still today. Different cultures have something unique in their weddings. For example in the Jewish culture they stomp on glass to seal the ceremony. You see it in every culture, but they all have the same outcome marriage.