Evolution & Human Behavior
Volume 30, Issue 4 , Pages 274-285, July 2009

Cultural transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge and skills: an empirical analysis from an Amerindian society☆

  • Victoria Reyes-García

      Affiliations

    • Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Passeig Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain
    • Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellatera, Barcelona, Spain
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellatera, Barcelona, Spain. Tel.: +34 (93) 581 4218; fax: +34 (93) 581 3331.
    • ,
  • James Broesch

      Affiliations

    • Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
    • ,
  • Laura Calvet-Mir

      Affiliations

    • Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellatera, Barcelona, Spain
    • ,
  • Nuria Fuentes-Peláez

      Affiliations

    • Departament de Mètodes d'Investigació i Diagnòstic en Educació, Universitat de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Spain
    • ,
  • Thomas W. McDade

      Affiliations

    • Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
    • ,
  • Sorush Parsa

      Affiliations

    • Graduate Group in Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
    • ,
  • Susan Tanner

      Affiliations

    • Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
    • ,
  • Tomás Huanca

      Affiliations

    • Centro Boliviano de Investigación y de Desarrollo Socio Integral, Correo Central, San Borja, Beni, Bolivia
    • ,
  • William R. Leonard

      Affiliations

    • Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
    • ,
  • Maria R. Martínez-Rodríguez

      Affiliations

    • Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
    • ,
  • TAPS Bolivian Study Team

Received 3 December 2008; accepted 3 February 2009. published online 13 April 2009.

Abstract 

The modeling of cultural transmission is of great importance for understanding the maintenance, erosion, and spread of cultural traits and innovations. Researchers have hypothesized that, unlike biological transmission, cultural transmission occurs through at least three different, non-mutually exclusive paths: (1) from parents (vertical); (2) from age peers (horizontal); and (3) from older generations (oblique). We used data from 270 adults in a society in the Bolivian Amazon to estimate the association between a person's knowledge and skills and the knowledge and skills of the (1) same-sex parent, (2) age peers (or individuals born in the same village as the subject within ±4 years of the subject's year of birth), and (3) parental cohort (excluding parents). We found a statistically significant association between personal and parental and old cohort knowledge. The magnitude of the association is larger for old cohort knowledge than for parental knowledge, suggesting that, for the studied population, the transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge and skills is mostly oblique.

Keywords: Ethnobotanical knowledge, Transmission of knowledge, Tsimane', Bolivia, Oblique transmission

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☆ A preliminary version of this article was presented at the I Jornada de Antropología y Ecología (Barcelona, Spain; September 27, 2007). This research was funded by grants from the Cultural Anthropology and Physical Anthropology Programs of the National Science Foundation (BCS-0134225, BCS-0200767, and BCS-0322380).

PII: S1090-5138(09)00017-8

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.02.001

Evolution & Human Behavior
Volume 30, Issue 4 , Pages 274-285, July 2009

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