The roles and values of wild foods in agricultural systems Bharucha, Zareen; Pretty, Jules
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences,
09/2010, Letnik:
365, Številka:
1554
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Almost every ecosystem has been amended so that plants and animals can be used as food, fibre, fodder, medicines, traps and weapons. Historically, wild plants and animals were sole dietary components ...for hunter–gatherer and forager cultures. Today, they remain key to many agricultural communities. The mean use of wild foods by agricultural and forager communities in 22 countries of Asia and Africa (36 studies) is 90–100 species per location. Aggregate country estimates can reach 300–800 species (e.g. India, Ethiopia, Kenya). The mean use of wild species is 120 per community for indigenous communities in both industrialized and developing countries. Many of these wild foods are actively managed, suggesting there is a false dichotomy around ideas of the agricultural and the wild: hunter–gatherers and foragers farm and manage their environments, and cultivators use many wild plants and animals. Yet, provision of and access to these sources of food may be declining as natural habitats come under increasing pressure from development, conservation-exclusions and agricultural expansion. Despite their value, wild foods are excluded from official statistics on economic values of natural resources. It is clear that wild plants and animals continue to form a significant proportion of the global food basket, and while a variety of social and ecological drivers are acting to reduce wild food use, their importance may be set to grow as pressures on agricultural productivity increase.
Africa is inferred to be the continent of origin for all modern human populations, but the details of human prehistory and evolution in Africa remain largely obscure owing to the complex histories of ...hundreds of distinct populations. We present data for more than 580,000 SNPs for several hunter-gatherer populations: the Hadza and Sandawe of Tanzania, and the not equalKhomani Bushmen of South Africa, including speakers of the nearly extinct N
The interactions between mobile pastoralists and semi‐sedentary Nilotic foraging groups in the Middle Nile Valley had long‐term implications for the development of social complexity as seen in the ...ancient African kingdom of Kerma. This study presents the results of the zooarcheological analysis of animal remains from two sites in the 4th cataract of the Nile valley, El Ginefab and Shemkhiya, and compares findings to other published sites in the region during a period of significant climatic change. Results indicate that the communities living at Shemkhiya and El Ginefab differed in terms of their meat preferences and their primary modes of bovid acquisition, and that pastoralist practices changed at El Ginefab through time. Hunting remained an important feature of subsistence practices, and regional comparisons indicate that the acquisition of wild bovids did not disappear with incorporation of domesticated livestock; however, pastoralists limited their hunting practices to smaller wild bovids in contrast to neighboring forager populations. A clear chronological overlap is documented between communities reliant on pastoralism and those reliant on hunting as a subsistence practice for several millennia. This highlights the need to more explicitly characterize and understand the dynamics of coexistence for the spread and establishment of pastoralism regionally, as well as how social ties, subsistence practices, and land use practices overlapped during periods of critical environmental changes and their implications for emerging social complexity.
Illegal hunting of wildlife by community members abutting African protected areas contributes to unsustainable use of wildlife, resulting in significant declines in wildlife populations. Contemporary ...intervention measures have largely been ineffective, leading to pervasive and persistent illegal hunting. Such illegal hunting of wildlife is partly exacerbated by poor understanding of what motivates people to hunt illegally. Applying a scoping review approach, this study aims at developing concepts for drivers of illegal hunting and how they influence illegal hunting behaviour by local hunters living in or adjacent to African protected areas. A total of 30 publications were included for review analysis from 1014 publications retrieved using data base searches on Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. The study identified 12 proximate and five underlying drivers, which were categorised into 10 thematic drivers of illegal hunting by local hunters. The need for survival and sustaining livelihoods was conceptualised as the key thematic driver of illegal hunting by local hunters. The study represents a novel work of conceptualising drivers of illegal hunting by local hunters with implications on the persistence of illegal hunting in Africa.
The exceptional preservation at Schöningen together with a mixture of perseverance, hard work, and sheer luck led to the recovery of unique finds in an exceptional context. The 1995 discovery of ...numerous wooden artifacts, most notably at least 10 carefully made spears together with the skeletons of at least 20 to 25 butchered horses, brought the debate about hunting versus scavenging among late archaic hominins and analogous arguments about the purportedly primitive behavior of Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals to an end. Work under H. Thieme's lead from 1992 to 2008 and results from the current team since 2008 demonstrate that late H. heidelbergensis or early Neanderthals used sophisticated artifacts made from floral and faunal materials, in addition to lithic artifacts more typically recovered at Lower Paleolithic sites. The finds from the famous Horse Butchery Site and two dozen other archaeological horizons from the edges of the open-cast mine at Schöningen provide many new insights into the technology and behavioral patterns of hominins about 300 ka BP during MIS 9 on the Northern European Plain. An analysis of the finds from Schöningen and their contexts shows that the inhabitants of the site were skilled hunters at the top of the food chain and exhibited a high level of planning depth. These hominins had command of effective means of communication about the here and now, and the past and the future, that allowed them to repeatedly execute well-coordinated and successful group activities that likely culminated in a division of labor and social and economic patterns radically different from those of all non-human primates. The unique preservation and high quality excavations have led to a major paradigm shift or “Schöningen Effect” that changed our views of human evolution during the late Lower Paleolithic. In this respect, we can view the behaviors documented at Schöningen as a plausible baseline for the behavioral sophistication of archaic hominins of the late Middle Pleistocene and subsequent periods.
We conducted a recent investigation in Quebec, Canada, concerning Canadian deer hunters who went to the United States to hunt deer and returned with symptoms of fever, severe headache, myalgia, and ...articular pain of undetermined etiology. Further investigation identified that a group of 10 hunters from Quebec attended a hunting retreat in Illinois (USA) during November 22-December 4, 2018. Six of the 10 hunters had similar symptoms and illness onset dates. Serologic tests indicated a recent toxoplasmosis infection for all symptomatic hunters, and the risk factor identified was consumption of undercooked deer meat. Among asymptomatic hunters, 2 were already immune to toxoplasmosis, 1 was not immune, and the immune status of 1 remains unknown. Outbreaks of acute toxoplasmosis infection are rare in North America, but physicians should be aware that such outbreaks could become more common.
The objective of this research was to examine the functions of geerarsa, a popular folksong for expressing feelings, aspirations and achievements artistically. Thus, different excerpts of geerarsa ...that depict the socio- cultural function, socio- economic function and socio- political function were collected for the study. Data were gathered using interview, observation and focus group discussion. The data were translated into English and analysed based on the alluded functions. The study shows that geerarsa is sung for different purposes by Oromos in Hababo Guduru. Thus, geerarsa is used as a medium for expressing political aspirations, socio-economic status, and culture besides nurturing children with the desired moral lessons. Thus, the people in the area reflect their norm and moral codes through their folktales. However, acculturation and globalization pose as threat to geerarsa and hence different mechanisms should be put in place to preserve this folksong. There are different materials used during geerarsa.
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