ArticleCurrent anthropology2016
The adaptive nature of culture. A cross-cultural analysis of the returns of local environmental knowledge in three indigenous societies.
Article in Current anthropology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Nine Centuries, Seven Words: Cross-Cultural and Cross-Temporal Evidence for the Erosion of Gallo-Lucanian Plant Heritage in Inland Southern Italy.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Valuing Behavioral By-Products: Evolutionary Significance of Neutrally Drifting and Exaptive Cultures in Primates.American journal of primatology · 2026Review
- When minority language persistence is not enough: the decline of foraging knowledge in German- and Ladin-speaking Alpine communities of Northern Italy.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2026Article
- Subjective well-being across the life course among non-industrialized populations.Science advances · 2024Article
- The global relevance of locally grounded ethnobiology.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2024Article
- Local indicators of climate change impacts described by indigenous peoples and local communities: Study protocol.PloS one · 2023Article
- Foraging complexity and the evolution of childhood.Science advances · 2022Article
- Rates of ecological knowledge learning in Pemba, Tanzania: Implications for childhood evolution.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Happy just because. A cross-cultural study on subjective wellbeing in three Indigenous societies.PloS one · 2021Article
- "Hunting Otherwise" : Women's Hunting in Two Contemporary Forager-Horticulturalist Societies.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Prestige and homophily predict network structure for social learning of medicinal plant knowledge.PloS one · 2020Article
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- Local ecological knowledge among Baka children: a case of "children's culture" ?Journal of ethnobiology · 2017Article
- Multilevel processes and cultural adaptation: Examples from past and present small-scale societies.Ecology and society : a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability · 2016Article
- Schooling, Local Knowledge and Working Memory: A Study among Three Contemporary Hunter-Gatherer Societies.PloS one · 2016Article
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9 authors.
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Abstract
Researchers have argued that the behavioral adaptations that explain the success of our species are partially cultural, i.e., cumulative and socially transmitted. Thus, understanding the adaptive nature of culture is crucial to understand human evolution. We use a cross-cultural framework and empirical data purposely collected to test whether culturally transmitted and individually appropriated knowledge provides individual returns in terms of hunting yields and health and, by extension, to nutritional status, a proxy for individual adaptive success. Data were collected in three subsistence-oriented societies: the Tsimane' (Amazon), the Baka (Congo Basin), and the Punan (Borneo). Results suggest that variations in individual levels of local environmental knowledge relate to individual hunting returns and to self-reported health, but not to nutritional status. We argue that this paradox can be explained through the prevalence of sharing: individuals achieving higher returns to their knowledge transfer them to the rest of the population, which explains the lack of association between knowledge and nutritional status. The finding is in consonance with previous research highlighting the importance of cultural traits favoring group success, but pushes it forward by elucidating the mechanisms through which individual and group level adaptive forces interact.
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