LAZ Simulation Listening Exam 2 – Level B2
Prof. Peter Cullen
Text
04/2012
Consider two tribes. First, we have the Yanomamo, a stone-tool-making huntergatherer tribe living along the Orinoco River on the remote border of Brazil and Venezuela.
Second we have the New Yorkers, a cell-phone talking, café-latte drinking tribe living
along the Hudson River on the border of New York and New Jersey. Both tribes share the
same thirty thousand or so genes that all humans do and thus in terms of biology and
innate intelligence, they are essentially identical. However, the lifestyle of the New
Yorkers is vastly different from the well-preserved hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the
Yanomamo, who have yet to invent the wheel, have no writing and have a numbering
system that does not go beyond one, two and many.
If we take a closer look at the two economies, we see that Yanomamo employment
is focused on collecting food in the forest, hunting small game, gardening a limited number
of fruits and vegetables and maintaining shelters. The Yanomamo also make items such
as baskets, hammocks, stone tools and weapons. The live in villages of forty to fifty
people and trade good and services among each other, as well as among the 250 or so
other villages in the area. The average income of a Yanomamo tribesperson is
approximately 90 dollars per person per year, while the average income of a New Yorker
in 2001 was around 36,000 dollars – or 400 times that of a Yanomamo. Without any
judgements on who is happier, morally superior or more in tune with their environment,
there is clearly a wide gap in material wealth between the two tribes. The Yanomamo
have shorter life expectancies than the New Yorkers, and during their lives the Yanomamo
must endure uncertainties, diseases, violence, threats from their environment and other
hard-ships that even the poorest New Yorkers do not face. A person is eight times more
likely to die in a given year living in a Yanomamo village than living in New York.
But it is not the absolute level of income that makes New Yorkers so wealthy, it is
also the incredible variety of things their wealth can buy. Retailers have a measure, called
the stock-keeping unit or SKU that is used to count the number of types of products sold
by their shops. For example, five types of blue jeans would be 5 SKUs. If a person were to
inventory all the types of products and services in the Yanomamo economy from stone
axes to types of food etc., the total would probably amount to only a few hundred or a few
thousand. The number of SKUs in the New Yorker’s economy is not precisely known, but
it is estimated in the tens of billions – greater than the estimated number of species on the
planet. Thus, the most dramatic difference between the New Yorker and the Yanomamo
economies is not their wealth measured in dollars, but rather the orders of magnitude of
complexity and differences in diversity present in the two economies.
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LAZ Simulation Listening Exam 2 – Level B2
04/2012
Prof. Peter Cullen
___________________________________________
Name, Date, and Registration Number
Questions: Answer all 5 of the following questions. SIMPLE AND CORRECT IS
BETTER THAN COMPLICATED AND WRONG. USE SHORT PHRASES AND
SENTENCES.
This exam requires interpretation and analysis. It is designed to test your ability to
apply what you hear to possible discussion areas.
1. What are the basic characteristics of the two “tribes” discussed?
2. How do the Yanamomo use their time?
3. How extensive is the Yanamomo trading network?
4. What does the author infer about relationship between complexity, diversity and
direct risk to life and health?
5. How does the author use SKUs to illustrate the practical differences between the two
economies?
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LAZ Simulation Listening Exam 2 – Level B2
Prof. Peter Cullen
04/2012
Answer Sheet
1. What are the basic characteristics of the two “tribes” discussed?
The Yanamomo are latin American stone-tool/hunter-gather tribe while the New Yorkers
live in North America and have an incredibly complex technological consumer culture.
2. How do the Yanamomo use their time?
we see that Yanomamo employment is focused on collecting food in the forest, hunting
small game, gardening a limited number of fruits and vegetables and maintaining shelters.
The Yanomamo also make items such as baskets, hammocks, stone tools and weapons.
3. How extensive is the Yanamomo trading network?
The live in villages of forty to fifty people and trade good and services among each other,
as well as among the 250 or so other villages in the area.
4. What does the author infer about relationship between complexity, diversity and
direct risk to life and health?
The inference is that the more complex and diversified an economy is, the less exposed to
risk (death from environmental factors, animals, disease) the population becomes.
5. How does the author use SKUs to illustrate the practical differences between the two
economies?
The NY economy has an order of magnitude of billions of Stock Keeping Units more
complexity than the Yanomomo tribe.
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