VANISHING TRIBES

Roy Pinney's anthropological safari takes in cultures about the globe from the Tuareg, Hottentot and Watusi of Africa to the Yapese, Arapesh and Dobus of Occania. Despite his orienting introduction and bow to Claude Levi-Strauss, it remains just that, a superficial once-over of social and religious customs, an excursion into exotica. There are the Ainu of the Far East, who speak a language totally unrelated to any known tongue, the Chukchi of Asia who practice group marriage. In the Middle East, the Bedouins; in Europe, the Lapps still survive; shards of Aztec and Mayan culture remain in Central America. Particular attention is given the Indians of North America. ""Ironically, the very transformations that are spurring a growing theoretical interest in 'primitives' are, in fact, hastening, their extinction""--by mortality or assimilation, notes the author. Or overexposure.