Differential loss of components of traditional ecological knowledge following a primate extinction event.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), an important component of the modern conservation toolkit, is being eroded in indigenous communities around the world. However, the dynamics of TEK loss in response to ecosystem change and disruption to social-ecological systems, and patterns of variation in vulnerability and resilience of different components of TEK, remain poorly understood. The Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus), a culturally significant primate, was formerly distributed across Hainan Island, China, but became extinct across most of this range within living memory and is now restricted to a single landscape, Bawangling National Nature Reserve. Gibbon-specific TEK (including folktales, natural history information and methods of gibbon exploitation) is still present in indigenous communities across seven Hainanese landscapes, but statistically significant differences in TEK content exist between landscapes with different histories of gibbon persistence: respondents from Bawangling and most landscapes that have recently lost gibbons report more gibbon-related folktales compared with landscapes from which gibbons have been absent for several decades. Species-specific folktales might have been lost more rapidly compared with other components of TEK because older community members are typically the 'cultural repositories' of stories, whereas knowledge about practical interactions with biodiversity might be shared more widely with younger community members.

Information transmission and the oral tradition: Evidence of a late-life service niche for Tsimane Amerindians.

Storytelling can affect wellbeing and fitness by transmitting information and reinforcing cultural codes of conduct. Despite their potential importance, the development and timing of storytelling skills, and the transmission of story knowledge have received minimal attention in studies of subsistence societies that more often focus on food production skills. Here we examine how storytelling and patterns of information transmission among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists are predicted by the changing age profiles of storytellers' abilities and accumulated experience. We find that storytelling skills are most developed among older adults who demonstrate superior knowledge of traditional stories and who report telling stories most. We find that the important information transmitted via storytelling typically flows from older to younger generations, and stories are primarily learned from older same-sex relatives, especially grandparents. Our findings suggest that the oral tradition provides a specialized late-life service niche for Tsimane adults who have accumulated important experience and knowledge relevant to foraging and sociality, but have lost comparative advantage in other productive domains. These findings may help extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital predict the development of information transmission services in a forager-horticulturalist economy.

Apropiación de la medicina tradicional por las nuevas generaciones de las comunidades indígenas del Departamento de Vaupés, Colombia / Appropriation of traditional medicine by the native communities new generations from the state of Vaupés, Colombia

En el departamento del Vaupés la Medicina tradicional (MT) juega un papel fundamental en las comunidades indígenas, siendo transmitida oralmente entre generaciones, lo que podría generar la pérdida de conocimientos. Se pretende, a través de una entrevista semiestructurada a jóvenes, determinar la importancia dada por ellos a la MT. Como resultado se obtiene que existe un polilingüísmo individual marcado, pero representado en minorías etnolingüísticas, implicando una permeabilidad constante de saberes y tradiciones, sin embargo se observa un reconocimiento claro de la MT y de los procesos que ella implica, estando relacionado con el uso de idiomas nativos y con la interacción que en su comunidad, familia y escuela se haga.Por esta razón actividades comunitarias como pescar, lavar en el río y trabajar en la chagra son actividades de mayor influencia para la apropiación de la MT, estando estas influenciadas por la capacidad de integración con las personas mayores por el idioma.

At the state of the Vaupés, the Traditional Medicine (MT) has a fundamental roll between the native communities, being orally transmitted among generations, which could lead to loss of knowledges. It is pretended through a semi-structured survey done to teen agers, to determine their importance to the (MI). As a result it was obtained that a marked single polinguilism exists, but it is represented by minor ethnolinguistic groups, explaining a constant permeability of knowledge and traditions, however it is observed a clear appreciation of the MT and of the implicit processes, being related with the use of the native languages and the done inter ­ action with their community, family and school. It is the reason why community activities like to fish, wash clothing at the river and work in the farm are huge influenced activities for the MT appropriation, and been influenced by the integration capacity with their language elder people.

Traditional knowledge and use of wild mushrooms by Mixtecs or Ñuu savi, the people of the rain, from Southeastern Mexico.

BACKGROUND: Mexico is an important global reservoir of biological and cultural richness and traditional knowledge of wild mushrooms. However, there is a high risk of loss of this knowledge due to the erosion of traditional human cultures which is related with the rapid acculturation linked to high migration of rural populations to cities and the U.S.A., and the loss of natural ecosystems. The Mixtec people, the third largest native group in Mexico only after the Nahua and the Maya, maintain ancient traditions in the use and knowledge of wild mushrooms. Paradoxically, there are few studies of the Mixtec ethnomycology. This study shows our ethnomycological research, mainly focused on knowledge and use of wild mushrooms in communities of the Mixteca Alta, in southeastern Mexico. We hypothesized that among the studied communities those with a combination of higher vegetation cover of natural pine and oak forests, lower soil erosion and higher economic margination had a greater richness and knowledge of wild mushrooms. Our study therefore aimed to record traditional knowledge, use, nomenclature and classification of wild mushrooms in four Mixtec communities and to analyze how these aspects vary according to environmental and cultural conditions among the studied communities. METHODS: In order to analyze the cultural significance of wild mushrooms for the Mixtec people, 116 non-structured and semi-structured interviews were performed from 2009 to 2014. Information about the identified species, particularly the regional nomenclature and classification, their edibility, toxicity and ludic uses, the habitat of useful mushrooms, traditional recipes and criteria to differentiate between toxic and edible species, and mechanisms of knowledge transmission were studied. The research had the important particularity that the first author is Mixtec, native of the study area. A comparative qualitative analysis between the richness of fungal species used locally and the official information of the natural vegetation cover, soil erosion and economic marginalization in each of the studied communities was conducted. RESULTS: A total of 106 species of mushrooms were identified growing in pine and oak forest, deciduous tropical forest and grassland; among the identified mushrooms we recorded 26 species locally consumed, 18 considered toxic, 6 having ludic uses and the remaining 56 species not being used in the studied areas but some of them having potential as food (56 species) or medicine (28 species). We recorded that 80, 22 and 4 species are ectomycorrhizal, saprotrophic and parasites, respectively. Our study shows that a complex and accurate knowledge related with the use, nomenclature, classification, ecology, gastronomy of wild mushrooms has been developed by Mixtecs; and that there is a relation between natural vegetation cover, lower soil erosion and higher economic marginalization and richness, knowledge and use of mushrooms in the studied communites. CONCLUSION: Our study showed that conservation and adaptation of ancestral mycological knowledge survives mainly through oral transmition, maintenance of cultural identity, forest protection, preservation native language and also paradoxically through the current socieconomical marginality among the Mixtec people. We also found that those studied communities with a combination of higher vegetation cover of natural pine and oak forests, lower soil erosion and higher economic marginalization showed a greater richness and knowledge of wild mushrooms. Use and sustainable management of wild mushrooms can be an alternative for local integrated development, but local knowledge and traditional worldview should be included into the regional programs of Mixtec biocultural conservation.

Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales.

Ancient population expansions and dispersals often leave enduring signatures in the cultural traditions of their descendants, as well as in their genes and languages. The international folktale record has long been regarded as a rich context in which to explore these legacies. To date, investigations in this area have been complicated by a lack of historical data and the impact of more recent waves of diffusion. In this study, we introduce new methods for tackling these problems by applying comparative phylogenetic methods and autologistic modelling to analyse the relationships between folktales, population histories and geographical distances in Indo-European-speaking societies. We find strong correlations between the distributions of a number of folktales and phylogenetic, but not spatial, associations among populations that are consistent with vertical processes of cultural inheritance. Moreover, we show that these oral traditions probably originated long before the emergence of the literary record, and find evidence that one tale ('The Smith and the Devil') can be traced back to the Bronze Age. On a broader level, the kinds of stories told in ancestral societies can provide important insights into their culture, furnishing new perspectives on linguistic, genetic and archaeological reconstructions of human prehistory.

Not all semantics: similarities and differences in reminiscing function and content between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

This study explored why and how Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remember the past. Indigenous Australians traditionally share a strong oral tradition in which customs, personal and cultural histories, and other narratives are passed across groups and between generations by word of mouth. Drawing on this tradition, in which inherent value is placed on sharing knowledge and maintaining connectedness with others, we hypothesised that Indigenous Australians would be more likely than non-Indigenous Australians to report reminiscing to fulfil social functions (but not self or directive functions). Furthermore, we hypothesised that Indigenous Australians would recall personal past experiences more elaborately than would non-Indigenous Australians. In Study 1, 33 Indigenous Australians and 76 non-Indigenous Australians completed Webster's Reminiscence Functions Scale. As predicted, Indigenous participants reported higher scores on subscales related to social functions than did non-Indigenous Australians: particularly "Teach/Inform" and "Intimacy Maintenance". They also scored higher on the "Identity" subscale. In Study 2, 15 Indigenous and 14 non-Indigenous Australians shared three memories from the distant and recent past. While Indigenous and non-Indigenous narratives did not differ in either emotion or elaboration, Indigenous Australians provided more memory context and detail by including a greater proportion of semantic memory content. Taken together, these findings suggest differences in both why and how Australians remember.

A arte de contar histórias e o conto de tradição oral em práticas educativas / The art of storytelling and the tale of oral tradition in educational practices

Este trabalho é fruto da pesquisa que se iniciou com o estudo de especialização em literatura infanto-juvenil o-juvenil "sobre as histórias que se contam para as crianças" na Universidade de São Paulo - USP, talvez pelo fato de eu mesma ser uma contadora de histórias. Nessa condição, até onde me lembro, sempre estive na atmosfera que experimentei, desde a infância, quando as pessoas se reuniam em torno das histórias do contador. Convencida da importância de se contar e ouvir histórias, por experiência própria, realizei um aprofundamento nos estudos para o mestrado em Ciências das Religiões na PUC-SP, cuja dissertação versou sobre: "Contar histórias como um caminho para o sagrado" que culminou com a defesa da tese de doutorado em Psicologia Social pela PUC-SP, onde trabalhamos a identidade dos contadores de histórias contemporâneos e o impacto social e cultural da importância do contar e ouvir histórias nas cidades modernas. A metodologia de trabalho empregada foi o conto de tradição oral. A partir dessa experiência, traçaremos, neste texto, relatos da nossa compreensão e contribuição dos contos tradicionais para as sociedades modernas e seu emprego na educação e áreas afins(AU)

This work is the result of research that began with studies of specialization in children's literature "on the stories that count for children" at the University of São Paulo (USP), maybe because I myself be a storyteller. In this condition, as far as I can remember, I was always in the atmosphere I experienced, since childhood, when people gathered around the stories of counter. Convinced of the importance of telling and listening to stories from my own experience, I realised a deepening in the studies for a master's degree in Sciences of religions at PUC-SP, whose dissertation focussed on: "storytelling as a way for the sacred" that culminated in the defense of the doctoral thesis in Social Psychology from PUC-SP, where we work the identity of contemporary storytellers and the social and cultural impact of the importance of the tell and listen to stories in modern cities. The methodology employed was the tale of oral tradition. From this experience, in this text, we will draw up reports of our understanding and contribution of traditional tales to modern societies and their employment in education and related field(AU)

The forager oral tradition and the evolution of prolonged juvenility.

The foraging niche is characterized by the exploitation of nutrient-rich resources using complex extraction techniques that take a long time to acquire. This costly period of development is supported by intensive parental investment. Although human life history theory tends to characterize this investment in terms of food and care, ethnographic research on foraging skill transmission suggests that the flow of resources from old-to-young also includes knowledge. Given the adaptive value of information, parents may have been under selection pressure to invest knowledge - e.g., warnings, advice - in children: proactive provisioning of reliable information would have increased offspring survival rates and, hence, parental fitness. One way that foragers acquire subsistence knowledge is through symbolic communication, including narrative. Tellingly, oral traditions are characterized by an old-to-young transmission pattern, which suggests that, in forager groups, storytelling might be an important means by which adults transfer knowledge to juveniles. In particular, by providing juveniles with vicarious experience, storytelling may expand episodic memory, which is believed to be integral to the generation of possible future scenarios (i.e., planning). In support of this hypothesis, this essay reviews evidence that: mastery of foraging knowledge and skill sets takes a long time to acquire; foraging knowledge is transmitted from parent to child; the human mind contains adaptations specific to social learning; full assembly of learning mechanisms is not complete in early childhood; and forager oral traditions contain a wide range of information integral to occupation of the foraging niche. It concludes with suggestions for tests of the proposed hypothesis.