Demography of the Tjimba of Northwest Namibia

0343198 Josephson人类在我们历史的大部分时间里大概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。现代人类行为的形成环境更像是现代觅食者，而不是经济复杂、人口稠密的群体。虽然民族志记录在描述觅食者的社会和文化生活方面相对丰富，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，但研究这一点的机会正在迅速消失。这项研究是对纳米比亚一个名为Tjimba的群体的初步研究，在过去的世纪里，他们只经历了零星的接触和很少的研究。Tjimba人生活在纳米比亚西北部非洲最后剩下的荒野地区之一，显然他们通过觅食，一些基本的园艺和偶尔的工资劳动为生。该项目将对Tjimba人进行人口普查，收集生殖和家谱历史，并汇编关于生存行为、季节性迁移和定居模式的资料。其目的是研究生存是如何影响人们居住的地方、何时和与谁结婚、有多少孩子以及寿命长短等问题的。这将成为对这一群体进行长期研究的基础。 这项研究的更广泛影响将扩大我们对觅食经济学的理解，以及获取食物如何影响我们物种的发展。

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.