PIRAHA PEOPLE

By: Davit Barbakadze

I’ll talk about:
• Who are Piraha people and where they live?

• About their culture.

• Their language.

• Their religion.
Piraha people
The Pirahã are an indigenous people of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. They are the sole
surviving subgroup of the Mura people, and are hunter-gatherers. They live mainly on the
banks of the Maici River in Humaitá and Manicoré in the state of Amazonas. As of 2018, they
number 800 individuals. The Pirahã people do not call themselves Pirahã but instead the
Hi'aiti'ihi, roughly translated as "the straight ones.
The Pirahã speak the Pirahã language. They call any other language "crooked head".
Members of the Pirahã can whistle their language, which is how Pirahã men communicate
when hunting in the jungle.
Their culture
Daniel Everett states that one of the strongest Pirahã values is no coercion; you simply don't tell other people what to do. There
appears to be no social hierarchy; the Pirahã have no formal leaders. Their social system is similar to that of many other hunter-
gatherer bands in the world, although rare in the Amazon because of a history of horticulture before Western contact.

Although the Pirahã use canoes every day for fishing and for crossing the river that they live beside, when their canoes wear out, they
simply use pieces of bark as temporary canoes.

Pirahã build simple huts where they keep a few pots, pans, knives, and machetes. They take naps of 15 minutes to, at the most, two
hours throughout the day and night, and rarely sleep through the night.

They do not store food in any quantity, but generally eat it when they get it.
Piraha language
Múra-Pirahã, is the language of piraha people. The Pirahã language is one of the phonologically
simplest languages known, comparable to Rotokas (New Guinea) and the Lakes Plain languages such as
Obokuitai. There is a claim that Pirahã has as few as ten phonemes, one fewer than Rotokas.

Pirahã has a few loan words, mainly from Portuguese. Pirahã kóópo ("cup") is from the Portuguese word copo,
and bikagogia ("business") comes from Portuguese mercadoria ("merchandise").

Fun fact: piraha has only three numbers, one, two and many.
Piraha religion
Piraha's religion is Animism. s the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.
Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and
perhaps even words—as animated and alive. Animism is used in the anthropology of religion as a term for the
belief system of many Indigenous peoples, especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of
organised religions.
OK bye