© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 197
A. Si, The Traditional Ecological Knowledge of the Solega, Ethnobiology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24681-9_7
Chapter 7
Honeybee Lore
7.1 On the Manipulation of Resources
Much has been written, in recent decades, on the biological classifi catory systems
of non-industrial language communities. The communities studied to date are quite
varied in their mode of subsistence, and include purely hunter-gatherer and purely
agrarian societies, as well as those that practice both to some extent. While detailed
cross-linguistic comparisons of folk taxonomies are rare, the few that have been
carried out suggest some regular trends for a few variables. In his pioneering study,
Brown [ 113 ] compared close to 40 languages for which ‘reasonable data’ were
available, and found that languages that have over 330 plant and/or 420 labeled
animal taxa tended to be spoken by small-scale agrarian societies. In contrast, the
languages of hunter-gatherer societies showed a strong tendency to possess a far
smaller number of plant and animal names. Brown attributes this difference to a
variety of causes, including a newly-developed interest in domesticated organisms
and an increased reliance on ‘famine foods’ by agriculturalists. Brown also suggests
that the actions of agriculturalists might lead to an increase in habitat types, and
hence local biodiversity.
Berlin [9] continued this theme in Ethnobiological Classifi cation , citing earlier
studies which showed that ‘cultivated’ plant species tend to have far greater numbers
of specifi c-level subdivisions of generic taxa, followed by plants that are considered
‘signifi cant’, ‘protected’ and fi nally ‘not treated’. In analysing data from his own
studies on Tzeltal and Aguaruna, Berlin defi nes ‘cultivated’ species as those that are
“deliberately planted and managed by constant and direct human intervention”
(p. 120). In contrast, ‘protected’ plants are those “not consciously destroyed in normal
horticultural activities”, ‘signifi cant’ plants are those “that yield useful products but
are not systematically protected”, while the remainder, ‘not treated’, are associated