ArticleHuman nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)2021
The Life History of Learning Subsistence Skills among Hadza and BaYaka Foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo.
Article in Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 33 citations in OpenAlex.
- Human Life History is Shaping Embodied Medicinal Plant Knowledge Across the Lifespan.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Parental perspectives on children's social learning in four cultures.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The social learning and development of intra- and inter-ethnic sharing norms in the Congo Basin.PloS one · 2026Article
- Article
- Women's subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Foraging and the importance of knowledge in Pemba, Tanzania: implications for childhood evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Sociocultural drivers of mycological knowledge: insights from Wixarika and Mestizo groups in western Mexico.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2022Review
- Foraging complexity and the evolution of childhood.Science advances · 2022Article
- Let's Play at Digging : How Vigorous Is This Energetic Task for a Young Forager?Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2022Article
- Costly teaching contributes to the acquisition of spear hunting skill among BaYaka forager adolescents.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Observational
- Social ties in the Congo Basin: insights into tropical forest adaptation from BaYaka and their neighbours.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Ecological and Developmental Perspectives on Social Learning : Introduction to the Special Issue.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Sharing and caring: Testosterone, fathering, and generosity among BaYaka foragers of the Congo Basin.Scientific reports · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Aspects 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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.