According to the linguistic anthropologist and former Christian missionary Daniel Everett, The Pirahã are supremely gifted in all the ways necessary to ensure their continued survival in the jungle: they know the usefulness and location of all important plants in their area; they understand the behavior of local animals and how to catch and avoid them; and they can walk into the jungle naked, with no tools or weapons, and walk out three days later with baskets of fruit, nuts, and small game.
[5]As far as the Pirahã have related to researchers, their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory.
Pirahã have a simple kinship system that includes baíxi (parent, grandparent, or elder), xahaigí (sibling, male or female), hoagí or hoísai (son), kai (daughter), and piihí (stepchild, favorite child, child with at least one deceased parent, and more).
[5] They trade Brazil nuts and sex for consumables or tools, e.g. machetes, gunpowder, powdered milk, sugar, whiskey.
[6]: 112, 134–142 Everett reported one incident where the Pirahã said that "Xigagaí, one of the beings that lives above the clouds, was standing on a beach yelling at us, telling us that he would kill us if we go into the jungle."
[6]: xvi–xvii A 2012 documentary called The Grammar of Happiness, which aired on the Smithsonian Channel, reported that a school had been opened for the Pirahã community where they learn Portuguese and mathematics.
[10] In addition to a formal school being introduced to the culture, the documentary also reported that the Brazilian government installed a modern medical clinic, electricity and television in the remote area.
Anthropological linguist Daniel Everett, who wrote the first Pirahã grammar, claims that there are related pairs of curiosities in their language and culture.
John Colapinto explains, "Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known.
Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations.
His colleague, Daniel L. Everett, on the other hand, argues that the Pirahã are cognitively capable of counting; they simply choose not to do so.
They asked me to give them classes in Brazilian numbers, so for eight months I spent an hour every night trying to teach them how to count.
However, if there had been pronouns at an earlier stage of Pirahã, this would not affect Everett's claim of the significance of the system's simplicity today.