IELTS READING S51AT2

Secrets of the Forest

A. In 1942 Allan R Holmberg, a doctoral student in anthropology from Yale University, USA, ventured deep into Q13 the jungle of Bolivian Amazonia, and searched out an isolated band of Siriono IndiansQ22 The Siriono, Holmberg later wrote, led a “strikingly backward” existence. Their villages were little more than clusters of thatched huts. Life itself was a perpetual and punishing search for food: some families grew manioc and other starchy crops in small garden plots cleared from the forest, while other members of the tribe scoured the country for small game and promising fish holes. When local resources became depleted, the tribe moved on. As for technology, Holmberg noted, the Siriono “may be classified among the most handicapped peoples of the world”. Other than bows, arrows, and crude digging sticks, the only tools the Siriono seemed to possess were “two machetes worn to the size of pocket- knives”.

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