article
Fitness and fertility among the Kalahari !Kung
American journal of physical anthropology • 77 (3) • Published In 1988 • Pages: 303-319
By: Pennington, Renee, Harpending, Henry.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
In this paper, Pennington and Harpending examine the relationship among environmental conditions, parental care, and childhood mortality among the !Kung. Studies have shown that length of parental care enhances survival of offspring in the first few years of life. However this investment of parental care means delaying reproduction of new offspring. Therefore there is a trade-off between parents having fewer children in whom they invest optimum care to insure survival to reproductive age and those having many children to make up for care-independent mortality. The !Kung appear to defy the model. 'Women who produced larger families…reared more surviving offspring than women who produced smaller families' (page 315). The authors suggest that the parental role of men was a factor favorably affecting childhood survival.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Composition of population
- Birth statistics
- Mortality
- Secondary marriages
- Family relationships
- Childbirth
- Abortion and infanticide
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- San
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2005
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Africa
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Southern Africa
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- article
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Ian Skoggard ; 2003
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1967-1968
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1967-1968
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Ghanzi and Ngamiland Districts, Botswana
- NotesAdditional notes
- Renee Pennington and Henry Harpending
- According to the authors the Ngamiland !Kung includes the Nyae Nyae !Kung in Namibia.
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 317-319)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 20014728
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- San (African people)