The Transpacific Origin of Mesoamerican Civilization: A Preliminary Review of the Evidence and Its Theoretical Implications

Anthropologists generally assume that civilization developed independently in the eastern and western hemispheres. Review of the features that distinguish the Olmec culture of Mesoamerica from preceding village farming groups shows, however, that many are present in the earlier Shang civilization of China. If Olmec civilization originated from a transpacific stimulus, this has important implications both for reconstruction of New World cultural development and for formulation of a valid theory of the evolution of civilization.     

西南喀斯特地区生物文化多样性的演化与耦合: 以贵州兴义坡岗自然保护区为例

本文以具有典型喀斯特环境特点的贵州兴义坡岗自然保护区为例开展实地调查和文献研究。通过层次分析法和人与自然耦合系统模型构建, 从文化景观视角探讨了喀斯特地区自然与文化系统的历史演化过程中, 国家生态政策制度与乡规民约等乡土保护体系对生物文化多样性的驱动作用。研究结果表明: 坡岗保护区经历了管护主体和保护利用态度的转变, 保存了典型的喀斯特自然生态系统, 当地世居的少数民族群体在长期生存与适应过程中创造了极具特色的传统民族文化。坡岗自然保护区丰富的生物多样性与文化多样性形成一个地理重合、协同进化且相互作用的维持系统。生物文化多样性耦合体系主要存在国家政策制度类与乡规民约等乡土文化类两种驱动因素。应加强西南喀斯特地区的生物文化多样性的保护, 推动该地区生物多样性与文化多样性的协同发展; 除了政策与制度类驱动因子的直接作用, 还需要注重村规民约以及生态传统知识等乡土文化的驱动作用, 以避免保护区自然与文化保护体系的割离。     

Inca expansion and parasitism in the lluta valley: preliminary data

Assessing the impact of cultural change on parasitism has been a central goal in archaeoparasitology. The influence of civilization and the development of empires on parasitism has not been evaluated. Presented here is a preliminary analysis of the change in human parasitism associated with the Inca conquest of the Lluta Valley in Northern Chile. Changes in parasite prevalence are described. It can be seen that the change in life imposed on the inhabitants of the Lluta Valley by the Incas caused an increase in parasitism.     

云南德宏傣族传统村落植物景观及应用研究

传统村落的植物景观反应了一个民族在长期实践中积累的植物认知和应用经验,该研究对云南省德宏州大盈江、瑞丽江流域的19个傣族传统村落进行了植物景观及应用调查。结果表明:德宏傣族传统村落植物景观水平分布为寨外(山林绿块+农田绿块+护堤绿带)——寨边(防护绿环+高山榕绿块)——寨内(绿点+绿线)的格局;垂直分布有5个景观层次;村寨内常见植物共181种,73科;村寨内植物多为人工栽培,具较强实用性,主要应用功能集中在食用、药用、观赏、防护隔离、香薰调味等方面;傣寨植物人文景观具宗教色彩。建议加强植物水平分布的空间联系,建立稳定的绿地系统格局;保持植物垂直景观层次,推广植物的建造功能应用;充分利用植物资源,形成产业优势;传承优秀的植物文化景观。推广植物在村落建设中的传统应用经验,促进民族村落与植物的可持续保护与发展,为德宏傣族人居环境建设与民族植物学应用提供科学依据。     

乡村旅游地生态文化传统与生态环境建设的互动效应——以云南石林县彝族阿着底村为例

乡村生态旅游是适合我国国情的生态旅游形式,也是一项可持续发展的朝阳产业。乡村旅游地的生态文化传统与生态环境建设之间有一种互动机制。本文以云南石林县阿着底彝族村寨的密枝林文化传统与乡村旅游产业的互动效应为例,探讨了文化传统对乡村森林资源及生物多样性保护的意义,强调通过加强村民生态教育、加强村规民约建设、发展生态循环经济,使互动效应永续发展。     

Palaeobotanical evidence for social difference? The example of the early medieval domain of Serris-Les Ruelles, France

Serris-Les Ruelles is an early medieval demesne (manor house) showing the bipartite structure which is typical of this kind of landed property. The organisation is based on social difference: on the one hand the lord in his manor house, on the other the peasant in their village. The difference is apparent from the inorganic remains. Two out of four possible criteria were applied to investigate whether the difference is also apparent in plant food. The result of the investigation was negative. The reason might be that the spatial and economic separation between lord and peasant was not yet wide enough where food was concerned.     

The pre-Natufian Epipaleolithic: long-term behavioral trends in the Levant

Few cultural developments have taken on as much archeological significance as when people began living in villages and producing their own food. The economic, social, technological, and ideological transformations immediately preceding and following these changes were profound. Early models of culture change associated with pre-agricultural societies of the Levant focused on the sudden, late origin of settled farming villages triggered by climate change. Accompanying this new economic and living situation was durable stone-built architecture; intensified plant and animal use; a flourishing of art and decoration; new mortuary traditions, including marked graves and cemeteries; elaborate ritual and symbolic behavior-a new way of life. This new life style arguably had a slow start, but really took off during the Epipaleolithic period (EP), spanning more than 10,000 years of Levantine prehistory from c. 23,000-11,500 cal BP. The last EP phase, immediately preceding the Neolithic, is by far the best-studied in terms of its cultural and economic contributions to questions on the origins of agriculture.1-4 Recently, archeologists have considered the earlier parts of the EP to be more culturally dynamic and similar to the later phase (Natufian) than was previously thought.3-10 The earlier EP is increasingly seen as demonstrating the behavioral variability and innovations that help us to understand the economic, technological, and social changes associated with complex hunter-gatherers of the Natufian and farmers of the Neolithic. This paper traces the cultural and biological developments of the EP period leading up to the Natufian and considers the long-term trajectory of culture change, social complexity, and village life in the Near East.     

Cultural transmission and the evolution of human behaviour: a general approach based on the Price equation

Transmitted culture can be viewed as an inheritance system somewhat independent of genes that is subject to processes of descent with modification in its own right. Although many authors have conceptualized cultural change as a Darwinian process, there is no generally agreed formal framework for defining key concepts such as natural selection, fitness, relatedness and altruism for the cultural case. Here, we present and explore such a framework using the Price equation. Assuming an isolated, independently measurable culturally transmitted trait, we show that cultural natural selection maximizes cultural fitness, a distinct quantity from genetic fitness, and also that cultural relatedness and cultural altruism are not reducible to or necessarily related to their genetic counterparts. We show that antagonistic coevolution will occur between genes and culture whenever cultural fitness is not perfectly aligned with genetic fitness, as genetic selection will shape psychological mechanisms to avoid susceptibility to cultural traits that bear a genetic fitness cost. We discuss the difficulties with conceptualizing cultural change using the framework of evolutionary theory, the degree to which cultural evolution is autonomous from genetic evolution, and the extent to which cultural change should be seen as a Darwinian process. We argue that the nonselection components of evolutionary change are much more important for culture than for genes, and that this and other important differences from the genetic case mean that different approaches and emphases are needed for cultural than genetic processes.     

How copying affects the amount, evenness and persistence of cultural knowledge: insights from the social learning strategies tournament

Darwinian processes should favour those individuals that deploy the most effective strategies for acquiring information about their environment. We organized a computer-based tournament to investigate which learning strategies would perform well in a changing environment. The most successful strategies relied almost exclusively on social learning (here, learning a behaviour performed by another individual) rather than asocial learning, even when environments were changing rapidly; moreover, successful strategies focused learning effort on periods of environmental change. Here, we use data from tournament simulations to examine how these strategies might affect cultural evolution, as reflected in the amount of culture (i.e. number of cultural traits) in the population, the distribution of cultural traits across individuals, and their persistence through time. We found that high levels of social learning are associated with a larger amount of more persistent knowledge, but a smaller amount of less persistent expressed behaviour, as well as more uneven distributions of behaviour, as individuals concentrated on exploiting a smaller subset of behaviour patterns. Increased rates of environmental change generated increases in the amount and evenness of behaviour. These observations suggest that copying confers on cultural populations an adaptive plasticity, allowing them to respond to changing environments rapidly by drawing on a wider knowledge base.     

Homicide and cultural evolution

Homicide rates are suitable materials for the study of “cultural evolution,” because they vary dramatically between societies (hence, are “cultural”) and change gradually rather than saccadically (hence, “evolve”).Sociological models of the sources of variation in homicide rates (“subcultures of violence”; demographic change; “legitimation of violence”; mass media effects) are criticized for inattention to the social context of violence and to the individual motives of the protagonists. Models of culture change that emphasize “transmission” are criticized for treating the culture-bearing person as a passive vessel rather than an active strategist. A satisfactory theory of the “cultural evolution” of violence awaits satisfactory theories of how people apprehend their interests and how they pursue them.     

Population structure of the Indian people: some microevolutionary aspects

Some aspects of population structure, namely village endogamy, marital distance and consanguinity in India are discussed. These parameters show social and geographic variation. The role of culture is of great importance in determining the mating pattern of a population. In the Indian situation, group endogamy in general does not cause inbreeding. Consanguinity is a cultural phenomenon of long-standing tradition, and so far there is no strong indication of a temporal change.     

The impact of interventions on a pre-industrial Austrian Alpine population

The purpose of the present study is to gain a better understanding of the role of culture in demographic behaviour. The case study uses demographic data to illustrate cultural factors intervening in the social organisation of an Austrian village in the period 1700-1900. Two sets of potential intervening variables that might explain the effects of culture on demographic behaviour were investigated: population policies through normative regulations and institutional changes due to shifts in government. The paper employs statistical techniques in a structural change setting for evaluating the impact of policies and institutional changes on the demographic development. There is clear evidence that normative interventions concerning the fraction of illegitimate births and the marriage pattern were effective.     

High fertility in a Peruvian Amazon Indian village

The relation between fertility and cultural change in a Peruvian Amazon Indian village was studied initially in 1964 and in more detail in 1969. The 1969 study included observations concerning social, economic, environmental, cultural, and health changes. Population growth in the village is nearly 5% per year, and fertility appears to exceed that previously recorded for other groups. The factors that may be contributing to the high fertility are explored. They are thought to include early and prolonged parity, nearly universal marriage and fertility, high reproductive efficiency, short birth intervals, Western health intervention lowering both infant and maternal mortality rates, and a decline in the prevalence of polygyny.Presented at the 99th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 13, 1971. The project upon which this publication is based is supported by Bureau of Health Services Training Grant #8-TO1OHSOO17-04.     

“Frame That Rug!”: Narratives of Zapotec Textiles as Art and Ethnic Commodity in the Global Marketplace

This article explores representations of Mexican Zapotec textiles as texts and as sites of contested values and meanings. Discussion of this indigenous cottage industry begins in the Oaxacan village of Teotitlán del Valle, the site of production, and follows the textile as it moves across social and cultural borders as a commodity in postindustrial consumer culture. The anthropologist's mediating role in brokering Zapotec textiles is considered within the social context of exchange relations between buyer and seller. Ethnographic stories about the production and aesthetics of Zapotec textiles are contrasted with consumers’ self-fashioning narratives of embodied experiences associated with their hand-woven possessions. The article concludes with reflections on the narrative threads of text that comprise a Zapotec textile's intrinsic value as both art and craft.     

The Cultural Topography of Wealth: Commodity Paths and the Structure of Property in Rural Lesotho

Discussions of poverty and wealth often assume that wealth is a measurable substance, the possession of which can be indexed on a linear scale, from high to low. This article contests this implicit assumption, arguing that wealth-holding is always complicated by the fact that exchange is culturally regulated, and guided along approved paths. An analysis of domains of wealth in a rural Lesotho village illustrates the point. Wealth-holding here is clearly unequal, but cultural, legal, and moral paths governing economic exchanges between different categories of property mean that the holdings of different households are in important ways incomparable, and that their wealth is different in kind, and not only in amount. The attempt to locate households economically in such a setting thus requires mapping a politicocultural "topography" of channels facilitating the flow of commodity exchange, dams obstructing, slowing, or filtering it, and furrows temporarily diverting the flow from one channel or dam into another. A meaningful ranking of wealth-holding must include a cultural analysis of commodity paths and the structure of property.     

民族植物学—社会及文化价值初探

简要介绍民族植物学的性质、研究现况及其在经济、生态、环境和学术上的应用情况。民族植物学的社会价值通过其在增强民族自信心、伦理学和知识产权等方面的作用得以论证。民族植物学的文化价值具体而生动,体现于种种直接的植物文化现象（如植物礼仪文化、食花文化、树叶信、草药文化等）和宗教行为（如植物图腾、树神崇拜、神林崇拜等）。通过对民族植物学的经济、生态价值和社会、文化价值的分析,作者相信,民族植物学对于文化多样性和生物多样性的保护将起到积极的作用。     

The role of industrial ecology in food and agriculture's adaptation to climate change

The food and agriculture sectors contribute significantly to climate change, but are also particularly vulnerable to its effects. Industrial ecology has robustly addressed these sectors’ contributions to climate change, but not their vulnerability to climate change. Climate change vulnerability must be addressed through development of climate change adaptation and resiliency strategies. However, there is a fundamental tension between the primary objectives of industrial ecology (efficiency, cyclic flows, and pollution prevention) and what is needed for climate change adaptation and resiliency. We develop here two potential ways through which the field can overcome (or work within) this tension and combine the tools and methods of industrial ecology with the science and process of climate change adaptation. The first layers industrial ecology tools on top of climate change adaptation strategies, allowing one to, for example, compare the environmental impacts of different adaptation strategies. The other embeds climate change adaptation and resiliency within industrial ecology tools, for example, by redefining the functional unit in life cycle assessment (LCA) to include functions of resiliency. In both, industrial ecology plays a somewhat narrow role, informing climate change adaptation and resilience decision‐making by providing quantitative indicators of environmental performance. This role for industrial ecology is important given the significant contributions and potential for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from food and agriculture. However, it suggests that industrial ecology's role in climate adaptation will be as an evaluator of adaptation strategies, rather than an originator.     

国家公园社区社会与生态福祉空间耦合协调度分析——以武夷山国家公园A村为例

国家公园体制建设是我国生态文明建设的重大举措,旨在提升社区生态福祉、实现人与自然和谐共生。目前对自然保护地社区福祉测度研究多从社会经济福祉方面进行测度,较少考虑生态福祉及其空间关联。构建中国国家公园社区福祉综合评估框架,以武夷山国家公园内A村为例测度其12个村民小组的社会与生态福祉,探究二者之间的耦合协调关系及其影响因素,基于耦合协调度分析提出社区分类调控优化策略。结果显示:(1)A村的社会经济福祉呈现以村道向东西两侧递减的分布趋势;(2)自然生态福祉整体上呈现由北部向南部递减的空间分布趋势;(3)A村的社会与生态福祉的耦合关系呈现协调型、磨合型、拮抗型和失调型4种类型,以协调型和磨合型为主。(4)选择与行动的自由(0.747)、基础生活资料 (0.742)和家庭经济(0.732)是影响整体耦合协调度的主要因素,而不同耦合协调类型的主要影响因素存在差异。基于此,本研究针对拮抗型和失调型社区的主要影响因素提出优化建议。     

百色盆地六林岭旧石器遗址试掘报告

本文是对2018年广西百色六林岭旧石器遗址试掘结果的报道。试掘共开7个探方（面积28 m²）和1条探沟,可见9层堆积,从两个层位共获得石制品182件（其中地层出土40件,采集142件）。虽然两个文化层石制品在埋藏和保存状况上存在明显差异,但属于同一个技术传统。石制品分为备料、石锤、石核、石片、断块和石器;石器包括砍砸器、手镐和刮削器。在第一文化层发现了与石制品伴生的玻璃陨石碎片,初步推测其年代为803 kaBP,尚不排除二次堆积的可能;第二文化层在第一文化层之下,年代要早于第一文化层,表明古人类在百色盆地持续活动了相当长的一段时间;两个文化层显示出不同的沉积环境,表明古人类在百色盆地生存环境的复杂性和多样性。