#2547 - Daniel Everett

Daniel Everett went to the Amazon as a missionary intending to translate the Bible and convert the Pirahã. Assigned to the community in 1976, he first visited in December 1977 and says he spent about eight years living with them across multiple periods, continuing fieldwork through 2013. He learned the language by observing interactions, pointing to objects, recording words, and correcting his understanding over years of daily practice. He says reliable research requires prolonged immersion: his first translation of the Gospel of Mark failed because its English-based grammar did not capture how Pirahã speakers understood longer passages, so he began again from the ground up.

Everett’s most contested linguistic claim is that Pirahã lacks recursion, challenging Noam Chomsky’s claim that all languages have it. Everett says Chomsky found the observation intriguing in 1984, but later called him a charlatan and dismissed his work after Everett disputed the universal claim. Researchers affiliated with MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Stanford Psychology, and Columbia tested Everett’s claims and, he says, produced results that appeared to support them. He argues that critics should propose experiments and testable predictions rather than attack researchers’ motives. He also cautions against sweeping conclusions: grammatical data are available for only about 1,200 of an estimated 8,000 languages.

Everett says dams on other rivers altered water levels and depleted fish in the Pirahã’s river, which the community had lived beside for nearly 300 years. He estimates the dam began operating about 10 years ago; since then, the river has fallen so low that people can walk across it in places. Before the decline, fish made up about 70% of the Pirahã diet and helped them meet their protein needs. With fewer fish, hunters travel farther into the jungle, often without success, and some people have moved toward larger rivers or greater integration with Brazilians. Everett says the disruption has contributed to hunger and conflict with nearby Brazilians. The Pirahã traditionally share meat rather than reserve it, reasoning that food is “preserved in the belly” of others, though they know how to smoke, salt, or dry meat for trade.

Everett initially brought his wife and three children to live with the Pirahã for a year. His son contracted meningitis, and Everett, his wife, and his daughters contracted malaria; his wife’s weight fell from 115 to 76 pounds before she recovered after blood transfusions and quinine. He says he and his wife provided medical help for 20 years, and that increased assistance contributed to population growth from under 200 people when he first arrived to about 700–800 later. Everett also worked on linguistic analysis and translation, including a large part of the Gospel of Luke. Villagers questioned what evidence he had for Christianity and why Jesus should matter to them. After hearing the story and seeing film strips, they said a man had presented himself as Jesus and tried to have sex with women; Everett said he was sure one man had done so, and the women did not want to hear more about Jesus.

Everett says his sustained contact with the Pirahã and his research contributed to his loss of Christian belief. He began seriously doubting around 1982 or 1983, five or six years into his time with them, but did not publicly say he was no longer Christian until 2001. He said applying scientific standards to faith made belief untenable: healing stories seemed anecdotal rather than statistically meaningful, and he questioned why faith healers did not heal amputees or raise the dead as Jesus did in the Bible. Leaving Christianity also meant losing missionary income and employment. When he told his wife he no longer believed, she left almost immediately; they later divorced, though he said faith was not their only marital problem.

Everett describes Pirahã life as centered on food, community, and time together, and says people seemed unusually relaxed and happy. He estimates hunters worked about 15 to 20 hours a week when food was available, but the community did not preserve food and could go hungry after an unsuccessful day. He says introduced rice, sugar cane, sweets, and soda were followed by obesity, diabetes, or widespread cavities, while regular supplies of Brazilian cachaça became a serious health problem. More broadly, he argues that language preserves knowledge and ways of describing the world: Pirahã speakers he encountered named particular plant and animal species and organized birds by what they eat. As languages disappear, he says, knowledge can be lost like the contents of a library. He favors careful descriptive fieldwork over brief visits and untestable claims, while acknowledging that observation and theory cannot be completely separated.