Prestige,possessions, and progeny

It has been suggested by some that the acquisition of symbolic capital in terms of honor, prestige, and power translates into an accumulation of material capital in terms of tangible belongings, and that on the basis of these goods high reproductive success may be achieved. However, data on completed fertility rates over more than one generation in so-called traditional societies have been rare. Ethnographic and demographic data presented here on the pastoral Bakkarwal of northern India largely corroborate the hypothesis concerning the interdependence between the attainment of various cultural goals and differential reproduction rates and indicate that the numbers of (especially male) surviving offspring and siblings are crucial to a man’s position in society.     

军都山古代人群牙齿磨耗及其饮食

以军都山墓地为代表的"玉皇庙文化"系中国北方青铜时代的一支具有鲜明地方特色的少数部族文化。本文对军都山墓地出土人骨牙齿标本作牙齿磨耗状况分析,试图为其饮食结构和社会经济形态的探讨提供线索。结果显示:军都山古代人群中,相同年龄组的男女两性牙齿磨耗差异不大;前部牙齿磨耗轻于后部臼齿,第一臼齿磨耗最重;臼齿磨耗样式大多呈现"正常平匀"式,臼齿磨耗角度大多较小,两者均随年龄而变化但没有显著的性别差异。经与其他样本组的对比认为军都山古代人群牙齿磨耗的特点可能与其社会经济农牧兼营的性质有关,推测动物性食物(肉食)可能在军都山古代人群主要饮食结构中占据重要比例,并包含有一定的农业经济成分。不同游牧人群牙齿磨耗程度差异较大,只有结合了磨耗形态及其他信息才有可能更切实地反映其饮食状况。     

Beja And Nilotes: Nomadic pastoralist groups in the Sudan with opposite distributions of the adult lactase phenotypes

Lactose tolerance tests with breath hydrogen determination were performed on 585 apparently healthy adolescents and adults in the Democratic Republic of the Sudan. Out of the total, 303 probands belong to the tribal group Beja, traditional nomadic pastoralists in the desert zone between the Nile and the Red Sea. The 282 Nilotes (mainly Dinka) are members of seminomadic cattle breeding tribes in the south of the Sudan. In both populations milk consumption is substantial but only in the Beja true milk dependence, sufficient to result in selective pressures in favour of the lactase persistence allele, is likely to exist. The proportion of lactose malabsorbers was 16.8% in the Beja and 74.5% in the Nilotes. The high prevalence of lactose malabsorption among the Nilotes fits into a converging gradient of lactase gene frequencies along the Nile Valley. The Beja are the first nomadic desert population in North Africa in whom a high prevalence of lactase persistence has been demonstrated on a numerically sufficient sample.     

Towards Endogenous Livestock Development: Borana Pastoralists’ Responses to Environmental and Institutional Changes

Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia are faced with the challenge of developing more efficient and sustainable use of natural resources. In past decades poorly adapted development interventions and inadequate land-use policies aggravated by population growth have weakened pastoral rangeland management. Ignoring pastoralists’ technical and organizational capacities has contributed to progressive land degradation, the erosion of social structures and poverty. The Endogenous Livestock Development concept recognises pastoralists’ indigenous knowledge-based strategies and priorities, and uses them as the bases for further development of their production system and social relations, to be utilized, improved and combined with modern technologies. This paper explores the Borana pastoralists’ adaptive strategies for improved utilization of natural resources and the manner in which they respond to environmental risk and external influences such as water development and new formal administration. The adaptive responses include controlled integration of crop production and protection of grazing reserves, as well as changing cattle breeding priorities and the adoption of camel husbandry. The pastoralists have started negotiations with the administration to regain control of land utilization by strengthening directives for settlements, land use pattern and extraction rates. To support these initiatives the study recommends that pastoralists and other stakeholders enter into an institutionalized process of negotiation that builds on indigenous knowledge and organizational structures and facilitates validation and implementation of newly generated knowledge.

Relationship between subsistence and age at weaning in “preindustrial” societies

Cross-cultural studies have revealed broad quantitative associations between subsistence practice and demographic parameters for preindustrial populations. One explanation is that variationin the availability of suitable weaning foods influenced the frequency and duration of breastfeeding and thus the length of interbirth intervals and the probability of child survival (the “weaning food availability” hypothesis). We examine the available data on weaning age variation in preindustrial populations and report results of a cross-cultural test of the predictions that weaning occurred earlier in agricultural and pastoral populations because dairy and cereal production increased the availability of easily digestible, nutrientrich foods appropriate for weaning. We found that, contrary to predictions, supplementation with liquid foods other than breast milk was delayed in agricultural populations relative to less agriculturally dependent ones and complementary feeding with solid foods was delayed in pastoral populations relative to those less dependent on herding. Although the duration of breastfeeding was longer in populations dependent on hunting, there was no qualitative evidence that such populations lacked foods appropriate for weaning. The patterns observed suggest that the relationships between demography and subsistence observed among preindustrial societies cannot be explained by the “weaning food availability” hypothesis. We discuss the implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying prehistoric human demography, subsistence shifts, allocation to parenting and mating effort, and the evolutionary implications of tradeoffs between diet and disease. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Salt Lake City, 5 June 1999 and the 4th International Anthropological Congress of Ales Hrdlička, Prague, Czech Republic, 4 September 1999. Daniel Sellen is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University; adjunct professor in the Department of International Health, Rollins School of Public Health; and an Honorary Lecturer in the Public Health Nutrition Unit at the london School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His research interests are in nutritional ecology; the relations between subsistence and demography; and the evolution and current diversity of young child feeding and caregiving practices. In addition to work on demography among traditional populations, he has published “Age, Sex and Anthropometric Status of Children in an African Pastoral Community” (Annals of Human Biology 27:1–21, 2000), “Polygyny and Child Growth in a Traditional Pastoral Society: The Case of the Datoga of Tanzania” (Human Nature 10:327–371, 1999), and “Growth Patterns among Seminomadic Pastoralists (Datoga) of Tanzania” (American Journal of Physical Anthropology 109:187–209, 1999). Diana Smay is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, Emory University. Her research interests include bioarchaeology, paleoepidemiology, the evolution of disease, and the behavioral determinants of paleodemography. Her dissertation work concerns aspects of selective inclusion bias and short-term stress events in skeletal samples.     

The nutritional consequences of pregnancy sickness

The purpose of this paper is to assess Profet’s (1992) and others’ hypothesis that nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (NVP) is adaptive. A number of studies have found an association between NVP and a decreased risk for early fetal loss (<20 weeks). It is assumed that the adaptive benefits of improved survivorship associated with NVP outweigh the minimal nutritional consequences. However, in populations that experience marginal levels of nutrition, NVP may have important nutritional consequences. To test these potential consequences, a study on NVP, nutritional status, and pregnancy outcome was conducted among Turkana pastoralists, who experience seasonal and chronic nutritional stress. Interviews and anthropometric assessments were conducted on 68 pregnant Turkana women of Kenya during a 1993–1994 field season. The results from the case study suggest that women who experience NVP do encounter nutritional consequences in the later stages of pregnancy and are more likely to experience poor pregnancy outcomes. These results suggest that NVP may not be adaptive in all environmental settings, particularly among marginally nourished populations. Financial support for the Turkana study was provided by a dissertation fellowship from The Population Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and NSF grants BNS-8718477, and DBS-9207837. Ivy L. Pike, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Ohio State University. Her research interests include the evolutionary and ecological context of health, nutrition, and reproduction. She has conducted research among Turkana women of Kenya and is initiating a project among the Iraqw, an agro-pastoral population of Tanzania.     

Growth of nomadic and settled Turkana infants of northwest Kenya

Turkana tribespeople reside in a semi-arid savanna ecosystem in northwest Kenya. For over a decade, Ngisonyoka Turkana nomads have been studied within a multidisciplinary framework that embraces ecology, anthropology, and human population biology. Original research objectives of the South Turkana Ecosystem Project were to study nomads longitudinally and within the context of the dry savanna ecosystem. These objectives have been expanded to incorporate settled Turkana who were nomads in the recent past, but who, for a variety of reasons, have taken up a life of sedentary cultivation. The research described here focused on comparisons of growth patterns of nomadic and settled infants from birth to 24 months of age. Infants were measured (recumbent length, weight, head circumference, arm and calf circumference, and selected skinfolds) in 1989 and 1990. Settled infants were slightly longer, but nomadic infants were heavier and fatter. Head circumferences were the same. Some variation was observed by season and year of measurement (from comparative surveys). Both groups showed pronounced weight faltering after 6 months of age when compared with U. S. NCHS reference values. Head circumference faltering was moderate and recumbent length faltering was only slight after 12 months of age. Comparisons of Turkana infant growth in the two populations can contribute indirectly to a better understanding of infant nutritional status, probable morbidity, and other factors, some of which may be linked to female reproduction. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Indigenous Knowledge and Use of Anisodus tanguticus in Pastoral Communities of Eastern Tibet,China, and Its Implications for Local Adaptation

Wild plant resources and related indigenous knowledge often play important role in facilitating human societies to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters and climate variability. We present a case study of using a traditional herb, Anisodus tanguticus, in a novel way by local pastoralists on the eastern Tibetan Plateau in coping with extreme winter events. Interviews of 13 key informants were carried out in seven villages, and in depth household surveys were conducted in two villages covering all the pastoral dependent households. Participatory observation has also been employed. We found that local herders applying dried above ground part of Atanguticus as a supplementary feed to livestock in winter, with the purpose of helping animals to overcome cold events and snow disasters. According to local communities, time of harvesting and type of animal to be fed are key factors of using this toxic plant. Local communities have accumulated a rich repository of knowledge about Atanguticus, including its habitat, life history, uses, and health enhancing effects. They developed an informal tenure system and benign management practices on this plant. This paper demonstrates that indigenous knowledge evolved from long term human nature interaction is important in preventing climate induced damages and lowering the risk aroused from climate uncertainties.     

Staging Social Structures: Ritual and Social Organisation in an Egalitarian Society. The Pastoral Pokot of Northern Kenya

The pastoral Pokot of northern Kenya represent their society as highly structured by descent and age grading. Descent groups (clans, lineages) and age grades (age sets, generation sets) are depicted as bounded but related units within a complex hierarchical and coherent system, the essence of Pokot society which is staged and visualised in major rituals. This study shows that they are not important in Pokot economic exchange. The formal analysis of livestock exchange networks centred upon individuals shows that emic representations do not match actual exchange behaviour. Complementing the well-established structuralist representation of pastoral social systems, this paper investigates the agency aspect, which has been largely unexplored. It furthermore documents how social exchange is contained in the various institutions of descent and age grading. Contextualising the case historically it is shown that the pastoral Pokot developed from a fragmented clan-based agro-pastoral society in which descent was the main ordering principle for land tenure and conflict management into a more comprehensive social entity with clearly definable borders to the outside, dense internal exchange networks and strong representations of the corporateness of subgroups. The rapid adoption of mobile livestock husbandry was accompanied by the rise of widespread exchange networks and social interaction with a much wider group of unrelated actors marking the foundations of a pastoral society.     

Effects of drought on child health in Marsabit District,Northern Kenya

This study uses five years of panel data (2009–2013) for Northern Kenya’s Marsabit district to analyze the levels and extent of malnutrition among children aged five and under in that area. We measure drought based on the standardized normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and assess its effect on child health using mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC). The results show that approximately 20 percent of the children in the study area are malnourished and a one standard deviation increase in NDVI z-score decreases the probability of child malnourishment by 12–16 percent. These findings suggest that remote sensing data can be usefully applied to develop and evaluate new interventions to reduce drought effects on child malnutrition, including better coping strategies and improved targeting of food aid.