The book deals with the impact of contact with the modern world, and specifically, the discipline of anthropology, on the Yanomamo people of southern Venezuela and north western Brazil. The title refers both to the story of El Dorado (an account of an indigenous civilisation encounted in roughly the same geographic area by the earliest European explorers) and to the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
The book became controversial on account of the accusations of improper, unethical and criminal conduct which it levelled against the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and the, then recently deceased, geneticist James Neel.
A detailed investigation of these charges by a panel set up by the University of Michigan found the most serious charges to have no foundation and others to have been exaggerated. Many commentators sympathetic to evolutionary psychology have portrayed the affair as an ideologically inspired blood libel on its practitioners. These accounts have mostly focussed upon the role played by Leslie Sponsel and Terence Turner in collaborating with the book's preparation and originating an inflamatory memo to the American Anthropological Association which was leaked (contrary to their declared intention).
External Link
A comprehensive repository of links to relevant documents compiled by Douglas Hume