Growth, Development, Aging, and Sociality Among the Tsimane of Bolivia

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

0136274 Kaplan This three-year research project studies how people develop from youth to aged in the traditional foraging and simple horticultural society of the Tsimane, in Bolivia. The investigators will test predictions about age-specific patterns of mortality, morbidity, functional status, skill, strength and endurance focusing on the aging process and the elderly; will test hypotheses about the attainments of social skills and social capital as well as physical growth and strength as constraints on maturation and reproduction; and will study the relation between life history characteristics of individuals and the pattern of resource flows within and among families. The researchers include two senior cultural anthropologists and five graduate and undergraduate students from the University of New Mexico and UC-Santa Barbara. The study sample will include ten Tsimane villages with a population of about 1,000 individuals. From the larger sample three villages with a total population of about 250 persons will be selected as a core sample for focused behavioral studies and monitoring. Various measures of mortality, morbidity, anthropometry, strength, and skills will be recorded as well as measures of time allocation, resource production and food distribution, childrearing skills, social status, and human and social capital. The data from this project will be important to a wide range of scholars interested in understanding the universal and variable features of human life histories under relatively traditional conditions, comparable to those prevailing during the long history of selection during which the human life course evolved.