Hunter-gatherers
gregladen | July 3, 2017My father in law is an excellent amateur mixologist. I don't drink alcohol very often, but we're all up at the cabins, so last night I had a paper plane. And I believe this is what led to a night of strange and extensive dreams, and in my dreams was my recently deceased PhD adviser, Irv DeVore. (Irv was not dead in the dream.) DeVore is famous for having initiated, with Richard Lee, the first scientific study of extant living foragers, and they worked with the Ju/'Honasi of Botswana/Namibia/South Africa.
So, it was strange to have the lingering dream on my mind as I opened the latest…
gregladen | April 28, 2017The Lese people practice swidden horticulture in the Ituri Forest, Congo (formerly Zaire). Living in the same area are the Efe people, sometimes known as Pygmies (but that may be an inappropriate term). The Efe and Lese share a culture, in a sense, but are distinct entities within that culture, as distinct as any people living integrated by side by side ever are. The Efe are hunter-gatherers, but the gathering of wild food part of that is largely supplanted by a traditional system of tacit exchange between Efe women and Lese farmers, whereby the Efe provide labor and the farmers provide…
gregladen | November 23, 2015I'm not going to say that Ron Howard is old or anything, but he isn't Opie any more. (And, in fact, it has been fascinating and inspiring to watch his career, by the way.) Anyway, Howard produced a new documentary with National Geographic called "Breakthrough: The Age of Aging, which premieres Sunday, November 29 at 9 pm et on National Geographic Channel. And, pursuant to this, National Geographic's web site is sponsoring a Roundtable on the topic. The roundtable addresses the question, "By treating aging as a disease are we just prolonging the inevitable or can we change the course of our…