PARENT SESSION
Oral Session 17: Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
Presiding: E Sulzman
Monday, August 2, 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, Meeting Room F 151.
Environmental cognition meets traditional knowledge.
Gonzalez-Plaza, Roberto*,1, 2, Lam, Mimi1, 1 Northwest Indian College, Bellingham, WA, USA2 Huxley College of the Environment, Bellingham, WA, USA
ABSTRACT- The Upper Paleolithic witnessed a major transition in the stabilization of climates and societies, ushering in a new era of human cognition, as manifested archaeologically by abstract forms of art. Thus when the Holocene arrived, we suggest that the mind was as it is today, using frugal and fast heuristics and further, rational thinking and logic as adaptive mind tools. We contend that the environment was a primeval selection force in the evolution of adaptive brain functions and that human behaviour prompted by these adaptations maximized fitness, shaping local environments. The environment, via natural kinds and frequencies, was projected in the minds of individual learners as specific ecological statistical information. This information provided a survival database that ultimately evinced local systems of traditional knowledge. We propose that pre-contact Pacific Northwest societies of North America and their human ecosystem dynamics were resilient and robust, based on detailed theories of living, metaheuristics, faithfully bequeathed for generations as oral wisdom by elders. Native people of the region relied on the use of abundant resources, which, despite sustained and high demand, never dwindled; people managed resources wisely. Moreover, when the Lewis and Clark Expedition and others, reached the region, they saw a pristine landscape, a perception that lasts until today. Salmon and cultivated gardens of camas lilies were among the resources people used intensely.
Key words: knowledge, cognition, traditional, evolutionary