Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People / Edition 1

by Kim Hill, A.Magdalena Hurtado

Overview

The Ache, whose life history the authors recounts, are a small indigenous population of hunters and gatherers living in the neotropical rainforest of eastern Paraguay. This is part exemplary ethnography of the Ache and in larger part uses this population to make a signal contribution to human evolutionary ecology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780202020372
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/31/1995
Series:	Foundations of Human Behavior
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	581
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Peter L. P. Simpson

Table of Contents

1: Life History and Demography; 2: The Ache; 3: Study Population and Sampling Methods; 4: Age and Sex Structure of the Study Population; 5: Causes of Mortality; 6: Rates of Mortality; 7: Development, Marriage, and Other Life Course Events; 8: Female Fertility; 9: Male Fertility; 10: Resource Availability, Intrinsic Variation, and Life Cycle Constraints; 11: Body Size and the Timing of Sexual Maturity; 12: Life History Trade-offs and Phenotypic Correlations; 13: Kin Effects on Life History; 14: Conclusions

Editorial Reviews

The Ache are a small indigenous population living in eastern Paraguay who, in the space of a single generation, have been transformed from autonomous hunter-gatherers to mission/reservation Indians. Hill and Hurtado began collecting demographic data on them in the late 1970s, and this study is the fruit of years of accumulated research. Their approach is grounded in evolutionary ecology. The chief methodological tool is life history theory, which concerns such matters as the timing of maturation, patterns of fertility and mortality in populations, and the assessment of optimal strategies and trade-offs… Upper-division undergraduates and above.” —O. Pi-Sunyer, Choice "...a magnificent achievement, and a landmark in at least three distinct fields: anthropological demography, human evolutionary ecology, and hunter-gatherer studies...." — Evolutionary Anthropology

From the Publisher