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Friday, August 20, 2004

Science for Republicans! 

Does this "lost tribe" sound familiar to anyone?

Life without numbers in a unique Amazon tribe
1+1=2. Mathematics doesn't get any more basic than this, but even 1+1 would stump the brightest minds among the Piraha tribe of the Amazon.

A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting.

Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time.

Their lack of enumeration skills is just one of the mental and cultural traits that has led scientists who have visited the 300 members of the tribe to describe the Piraha as "something from Mars."
(via Globe and Mail)

"Piraha"? Could that be a typo for Piranha? As in Dinsdale Piranha, a.k.a The Inerrant Boy?

Since it looks like the non-counting Piraha handled the Federal deficit numbers, the unemployment numbers, the WMD numbers, the Iraq budgeting numbers...

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