Comments on: The reason the Efe won’t normally kill an insect … https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/ Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:54:40 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: Delurked lurker https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507143 Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:54:40 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507143 I like the Efe, my kind of people 🙂

]]> By: megan https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507142 Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:14:59 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507142 Weel it’s how early humans CONTROLLED THEIR POPULATION BASED ON SURROUNDING RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT. Compared to popping out spawn every time you get the urge because society will help to rape the land’s resources to provide. Now instead a Semitic/Arabic God approves of our species to GO AND MULTIPLY ADD INFINITUM and replace biolife with humanity and sprawl.
GROWTH IS GOOD AND PROGRESS, no matter the type or the repercussions.
We are walking viruses, algae blooms, spreading cancer with legs and brains.

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507141 Fri, 19 Aug 2011 05:02:22 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507141 Yeah, the conversation about which side of the tree you can’t walk by went on for some time… It depends on which direction you are going. Yeah, that walking around thing applies in a LOT of cultural practices around the world. In one group of Siberian caribou herders that a colleage of mine studied, there was an imaginary line running from a stake in front of a house backwards through the house (all the houses face the same way) to infinity, and women can not ever cross that line. Sort of similar.

I like to think of the fertility rules as being pretty typically linguistic; They are arbitrary and symbolic, not functional/meaningful. The fetus link is pretty typical. .. there’s a bunch of blatant iconographic linkage between acts or things and fertility. For instance, if someone does have twins there is a ceremony which involves going from village to village and pretending to plant and hoe a garden. But much of the other symbolism is purely arbitrary. I definitely probed that question.

]]> By: Erp https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507140 Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:21:08 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507140 To walk by it correctly (on the left) I assume you keep your right arm towards it (e.g., if circling the tree you walk clockwise around it). Oddly enough the same custom for certain things like churches applied in English folklore (see the fairy tale Childe Rowland and Burd Ellen).

]]> By: Russell https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507139 Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:16:36 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507139 How do you tell the right side of a tree?

]]> By: Charles Sullivan https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507138 Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:48:28 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/08/18/the-reason-the-efe-wont-normal/#comment-507138 I wonder if the Efe have some explanation for how killing an insect could influence fertility. Not handling the antelope fetus makes sense intuitively in a sympathetic “magic” kind of way.

I’m wondering if they have some kind of causal explanation for how it might work with insects. Is it the spirit of the insect, or is it some third-party spirit that intervenes, is it the dead ancestors? Does it have to do with revenge for killing the insect?

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