Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:57:08.347Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shamanism and efficacious exceptionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2018

Aaron D. Blackwell  and
Benjamin Grant Purzycki
Aaron D. Blackwell
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106. blackwell@anth.ucsb.eduwww.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/blackwell Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. benjamin_purzycki@eva.mpg.dehttps://bgpurzycki.wordpress.com/
Benjamin Grant Purzycki
Affiliation:
Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. benjamin_purzycki@eva.mpg.dehttps://bgpurzycki.wordpress.com/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Shamans can have efficacy at healing through botanical remedies and in observational and advisory functions through cognitive strengths, while shamanic acts of strangeness are likely honest signals of these qualities. Given this potential for shamanic practices to have true efficacy and the capacity for honest signaling, we expect efficacy will influence the spread, persistence, and loss of shamanic practices.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 41 , 2018 , e69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andritzky, W. (1989) Sociopsychotherapeutic functions of ayahuasca healing in Amazonia. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 21(1):77–89. doi:10.1080/02791072.1989.10472145.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blackwell, A. D. (2009) Life history trade-offs in growth and immune function: The behavioral and immunological ecology of the Shuar of Amazonian Ecuador, an indigenous population in the midst of rapid economic and ecological change. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon.Google Scholar
Crow Dog, L. & Erdoes, R. (1995) Crow Dog: Four generations of Sioux medicine men. Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Feraca, S. E. (1998) Wakinyan: Lakota religion in the twentieth century. University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Grim, J. A. (1983) The shaman: Patterns of religious healing among the Ojibway Indians. University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Hagen, E. H., Roulette, C. J. & Sullivan, R. J. (2013) Explaining human recreational use of “pesticides”: The neurotoxin regulation model of substance use vs. the hijack model and implications for age and sex differences in drug consumption. Frontiers in Psychiatry 4:142. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00142.Google Scholar
Hagen, E. H., Sullivan, R. J., Schmidt, R., Morris, G., Kempter, R. & Hammerstein, P. (2009) Ecology and neurobiology of toxin avoidance and the paradox of drug reward. Neuroscience 160(1):69–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heinrich, M. & Gibbons, S. (2001) Ethnopharmacology in drug discovery: An analysis of its role and potential contribution. The Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology 53(4):425–32. doi:10.1211/0022357011775712.Google Scholar
Ingelman-Sundberg, M., Sim, S. C., Gomez, A. & Rodriguez-Antona, C. (2007) Influence of cytochrome P450 polymorphisms on drug therapies: Pharmacogenetic, pharmacoepigenetic and clinical aspects. Pharmacology and Therapeutics 116(3):496–526. doi:10.1016/j.pharmthera.2007.09.004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luna, L. E. (1984) The concept of plants as teachers among four Mestizo shamans of Iquitos, northeastern Peru. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 11(2):135–56. doi:10.1016/0378-8741(84)90036-9.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. G. (2012) Finding minds in the natural world: Dynamics of the religious system in the Tyva Republic. University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Roulette, C. J., Kazanji, M., Breurec, S. & Hagen, E. H. (2016) High prevalence of cannabis use among Aka foragers of the Congo Basin and its possible relationship to helminthiasis. American Journal of Human Biology 28(1):5–15. doi:10.1002/ajhb.22740.Google Scholar
Roulette, C. J., Mann, H., Kemp, B. M., Remiker, M., Roulette, J. W., Hewlett, B. S., Kazanji, M., Breurec, S., Monchy, D., Sullivan, R. J. & Hagen, E. H. (2014) Tobacco use vs. helminths in Congo basin hunter-gatherers: Self-medication in humans? Evolution and Human Behavior 35(5):397–407. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.05.005.Google Scholar
Sugiyama, L. S. & Scalise Sugiyama, M. (2003) Social roles, prestige, and health risk: Social niche specialization as a risk-buffering strategy. Human Nature 14(2):165–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sullivan, R. J., Hagen, E. H. & Hammerstein, P. (2008) Revealing the paradox of drug reward in human evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275(1640):1231.Google Scholar
Whiteley, P. M. (1998) Rethinking Hopi ethnography. Smithsonian.Google Scholar