Beyond Feelings

CHAPTER 4 What Does It Mean to Know?
Books and articles referring to athletes’ “second wind” abound. Yet
Nyles Humphrey and Robert Ruhling of the University of Utah have presented
evidence that there really is no second wind and that the sensation
experienced by many athletes is merely psychological. 18
A Cautionary Tale
Even authorities who have the most sophisticated measurement tools at
their disposal fail to achieve certainty. Consider, for example, the challenge
to anthropologists posed by the Tasaday tribe. When discovered on
the Philippine island of Mindanao in the late 1960s, the Tasaday were
living a Stone Age existence—inhabiting caves in the deep jungle, ignorant
of agriculture, subsisting by hunting and gathering. Manuel Elizaldo,
an associate of then dictator Ferdinand Marcos, quickly became their
protector, mentor, and go-between with a fascinated world. A number of
anthropologists and other experts visited the tribe and studied their artifacts,
language, and social structure. Except for a few skeptics, most scholars
judged them to be authentic Stone Age people. Prestigious publications
like National Geographic wrote about the Tasaday and marveled at the fact
that they were such an innocent, gentle people with no words in their
language for “weapon,” “war,” or “hostility.”
In 1986, after the Marcos regime collapsed, a Swiss journalist visited
the Tasaday and found them living in houses. They reportedly admitted
to him that their story was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Elizaldo.
He supposedly told them when to go to the caves and put on the Stone
Age act for visiting journalists and scholars. Elizaldo has denied the
charge and has had the continuing support of many scientists. Douglas
Yen, an ethnobiologist and early Tasaday researcher, originally sought to
link the group to neighboring farming tribes, but he now believes the
Stone Age circumstances were genuine. (He cites a case in which little
children were shown cultivated rice and displayed amazement.) Carol
Molony, a linguist and another early Tasaday scholar, is also a believer.
She argues that the tribe, children as well as adults, would have to have
been superb actors to eliminate all agricultural metaphors from their
speech. A local priest and former skeptic, Fr. Sean McDonagh, also believes
the Tasaday to be authentic and says neighboring tribes do too.
One continuing element of dispute concerns the authenticity of Tasaday
tools. Zeus Salazar, a Philippine anthropologist, maintains that the loose
straps attaching stones to handles suggest a poor attempt to fake Stone
Age methods. Yet archaeologist Ian Glover says such looseness has been
noted in authentic Stone Age implements. The Tasaday’s own statements
have not simplified the puzzle. They told NBC and Philippine television
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