scholarly journals Co-father relationships among the Suruí (Paiter) of Brazil

Author(s):  
Robert S Walker ◽  
Cédric Yvinec ◽  
Ryan M Ellsworth ◽  
Drew H Bailey

Partible paternity refers to the conception belief that children can have multiple fathers (“co-fathers”) and is common to indigenous cultures of lowland South America. The nature of social relationships observed between co-fathers reveals information about the reproductive strategies underlying partible paternity. Here we analyze clan, genealogical, and social relationships between co-fathers for the Suruí, an indigenous horticultural population in Brazil. We show that co-fathers roughly assort into two separate categories. In the affiliative category, co-father relationships are amicable when they are between close kin, namely brothers and father-son. In the competitive category, relationships are more likely of avoidance or open hostility when between more distant kin such as cousins or unrelated men of different clans. Results therefore imply multiple types of relationships, including both cooperative and competitive contexts, under the rubric of partible paternity. These complexities of partible paternity institutions add to our knowledge of the full range of cross-cultural variation in human mating/marriage arrangements and speak to the debate on whether or not humans should be classified as cooperative breeders.

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S Walker ◽  
Cédric Yvinec ◽  
Ryan M Ellsworth ◽  
Drew H Bailey

Partible paternity refers to the conception belief that children can have multiple fathers (“co-fathers”) and is common to indigenous cultures of lowland South America. The nature of social relationships observed between co-fathers reveals information about the reproductive strategies underlying partible paternity. Here we analyze clan, genealogical, and social relationships between co-fathers for the Suruí, an indigenous horticultural population in Brazil. We show that co-fathers roughly assort into two separate categories. In the affiliative category, co-father relationships are amicable when they are between close kin, namely brothers and father-son. In the competitive category, relationships are more likely of avoidance or open hostility when between more distant kin such as cousins or unrelated men of different clans. Results therefore imply multiple types of relationships, including both cooperative and competitive contexts, under the rubric of partible paternity. These complexities of partible paternity institutions add to our knowledge of the full range of cross-cultural variation in human mating/marriage arrangements and speak to the debate on whether or not humans should be classified as cooperative breeders.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S Walker ◽  
Cédric Yvinec ◽  
Ryan M Ellsworth ◽  
Drew H Bailey

Partible paternity refers to the conception belief that children can have multiple fathers (“co-fathers”) and is common to indigenous cultures of lowland South America. The nature of social relationships observed between co-fathers reveals information about the reproductive strategies underlying partible paternity. Here we analyze clan, genealogical, and social relationships between co-fathers for the Suruí, an indigenous horticultural population in Brazil. We show that co-fathers roughly assort into two separate categories. In the affiliative category, co-father relationships are amicable when they are between close kin, namely brothers and father-son. In the competitive category, relationships are more likely of avoidance or open hostility when between more distant kin such as cousins or unrelated men of different clans. Results therefore imply multiple male mating strategies, including both cooperative and competitive contexts, under the rubric of partible paternity. The complexities of partible paternity institutions add to our knowledge of the full range of cross-cultural variation in human mating/marriage arrangements and speak to the debate on whether or not humans should be classified as cooperative breeders.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Cipora ◽  
Venera Gashaj ◽  
Annabel Gridley ◽  
Mojtaba Soltanlou ◽  
Hans-Christoph Nuerk

Despite variety of cultures, our shared biology and the universality of finger counting suggests that numbers are embodied. Another lines of research show that numerical cognition might be bound to what our bodies are able to do. Differences in finger counting are apparent even within Western cultures. Relatively few indigenous cultures have been systematically analyzed in terms of traditional finger counting and montring (i.e., communicating numbers with fingers) routines. Even fewer studies used the same protocols across cultures, allowing for a systematic comparison of indigenous and Western finger counting routines. We analyze the finger counting and montring routines of Tsimane’ (N = 121), an indiginous people living in the Bolivian Amazon rainforest, depending on handedness, education level, and exposure to mainstream, industrialised Bolivian culture. Tsimane' routines are compared with those of German and British participants. Tsimane’ reveal a greater variation in finger counting and montring routines, which seems to be modified by their education level. We outline a framework on how different factors might affect cross-cultural and within-cultural variation in finger counting.


Human Nature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheina Lew-Levy ◽  
Erik J. Ringen ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Ibrahim A. Mabulla ◽  
Tanya Broesch ◽  
...  

AbstractAspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural variation in how and from whom learning occurred. Learning patterns and community perceptions of task difficulty were assessed through interviews. We found no relationship between task difficulty, age of acquisition, and oblique transmission, and a weak but positive relationship between task difficulty and rates of teaching. While same-sex transmission was normative in both societies, tasks ranked as more difficult were more likely to be transmitted by men among the BaYaka, but not among the Hadza, potentially reflecting cross-cultural differences in the sexual division of subsistence and teaching labor. Further, the BaYaka were more likely to report learning via teaching, and less likely to report learning via observation, than the Hadza, possibly owing to differences in socialization practices.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722098837
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Sorokowska ◽  
Supreet Saluja ◽  
Piotr Sorokowski ◽  
Tomasz Frąckowiak ◽  
Maciej Karwowski ◽  
...  

Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors. Our results indicate that affective touch was most prevalent in relationships with partners and children, and its diversity was relatively higher in warmer, less conservative, and religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. This research allows for a broad and integrated view of the bases of cross-cultural variability in affective touch.


2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (17) ◽  
pp. 4688-4693 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett ◽  
Alexander Bolyanatz ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Daniel M. T. Fessler ◽  
Simon Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment.


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