Demography of the Tjimba of Northwest Namibia

据推测，在我们历史的大部分时间里，0343198约瑟夫森人类都生活在小规模的狩猎和采集群体中，但今天很少有人这样做。现代人的行为是在更像现代觅食者的环境中形成的，而不是在经济复杂、人口稠密的群体中。虽然民族志记录对采猎者的社会和文化生活的描述相对丰富，但这些群体中很少有人被定量研究。最近的理论发展将注意力集中在觅食的经济学及其对人口和社会模式的影响上，但研究这一问题的机会正在迅速消失。这项研究是对纳米比亚一群名为Tjimba的人的初步研究，在过去的一个世纪里，他们只经历了零星的接触，几乎没有研究。Tjimba人生活在纳米比亚西北部的非洲仅存的荒野地区之一，他们显然通过觅食、一些基本的园艺和偶尔的受薪劳动来谋生。该项目将对Tjimba人进行普查，收集生殖和家谱历史，并汇编关于生存行为、季节性迁徙和定居模式的信息。其目的是考察生计如何影响人们的生活地点、结婚时间和结婚对象、他们有多少孩子以及他们的寿命。这将为这一群体的长期研究奠定基础。这项研究的更广泛的影响将是扩大我们对觅食的经济学以及获取食物如何影响我们物种发展的理解。

0343198 Josephson Humans presumably lived in small-scale hunting and gathering groups for most of our history, but few do so today. Modern human behavior was shaped in circumstances far more like those seen in modern foragers than in economically complex, densely populated groups. While the ethnographic record is comparatively rich in descriptions of the social and cultural lives of foragers, few of these groups have also been studied quantitatively. Recent theoretical developments have focused attention on the economics of foraging and its influence on demographic and social patterns, but opportunities to study this are rapidly vanishing. This research is a pilot study of a Namibian group called the Tjimba, who have experienced only sporadic contact and little study over the last century. The Tjimba live in northwest Namibia in one of the last remaining wilderness areas in Africa, and apparently make their living through foraging, some rudimentary gardening, and occasional wage labor. This project will conduct a census of the Tjimba, collect reproductive and genealogical histories, and compile information about subsistence behavior, seasonal movement, and settlement pattern. The objective is to examine how subsistence affects such things as where people live, when and whom they marry, how many children they have, and how long they live. This will form the foundation for a long-term study of this group. The broader impact of this study will be to expand our understanding of the economics of foraging and how acquiring food influenced the development of our species.