Tsimané

The Tsimané, also known as the Tsimane' or Chimane, are an indigenous people of lowland Bolivia, living chiefly in the Beni Department municipalities of San Borja, San Ignacio de Moxos, Rurrenabaque, and Santa Ana del Yacuma.[4] The Tsimané are the main residents of the T’simane Council Territory (Spanish: Territorio del Consejo T’simane) and the Pilón Lajas Reserve. They are primarily a subsistence agriculture culture, although hunting and fishing contribute significantly to many of the settlements' food supply. Those Tsimané living in the Reserve are affiliated with the multiethnic Consejo Regional Tsimane Moseten (CRTM), which holds the title to the Reserve as a Native Community Land or TCO.[5]

For the language, see Tsimané language.
Tsimané
Photo taken in 1913 during Erland Nordenskiöld's expedition in Bolivia
Total population
16,958[1]
Regions with significant populations
 Bolivia ( Beni)
Languages
Tsimané, Spanish[2]
Religion
Traditional tribal religion[2]
Related ethnic groups
Mosetén[3]

Name

The Tsimané are also known as the Achumano, Chamano, Chimane, Chimanis, Chimanisa, Chimnisin, Chumano, Nawazi-Moñtji, and Ramano people.[3]

Language

The Tsimané speak the Tsimané language, which is a Mosetenan language. The other Mosetenan languages are Mosetén of Santa Ana and Mosetén of Covendo (Sakel 2004).[6] It can be described as a small language family, though sometimes it also appears as a language isolate. The reason for this is that some of the variants are mutually intelligible (Sakel 2004), see also[2]

Subsistence

They live in small communities composed of 20 to 30 families. Tsimané and Mosetén people depends mainly on subsistence farming, they cultivate bananas and manioc through swidden agriculture, although hunting, fishing and gathering contribute significantly as a source of food for almost all communities.[7] The population has been undergoing some degree of market integration over the past 15 years, and some Tsimane now participate in the cash economy.[2]

Health

Both the Tsimane' Amazonian Panel Study[8] and The Tsimane Health and Life History Project have studied the Tsimane since 2002.[9] Among other things, it appears that they do not develop heart disease as they age in the same ways as people in the developed world.[10][11] Blood tissue from the Tsimané exhibits a slower intrinsic epigenetic aging rate than that of other populations according to a biomarker of tissue age known as epigenetic clock.[12] This finding might explain the "Tsimane inflammation paradox", wherein high levels of inflammation and infection, and low HDL cholesterol levels, are not associated with accelerated cardiovascular aging.[10]

Tsimané sleep patterns have been studied as an example of "natural" sleep in nonindustrial or preindustrial societies, and to assess relationships between sleep patterns and health. Factors observed include sleep duration, timing, natural light, ambient temperature and seasonality. A normal daily pattern for a Tsimané group is to work during the day, congregate around a fire while cooking food, share a meal, then remain by the fire as it gets dark, sharing stories and information. Children and mothers tend to move away to sleep before male adults, with sleep onset occurring, on average, 3.3 hours after sunset. From beginning to end, sleep periods averaged 6.9–8.5 hours, with actual time slept of 5.7–7.1 hours, less sleep than reported in many industrial societies.[13][14]

The average Tsimané woman has nine children in her lifetime. A study of 983 Tsimané women found that 70% were infected with the parasitic roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides, which is believed to have increased their fertility rate by suppressing their immune system, leading to two additional children over the course of a lifetime.[15]

Notes
  1. "Censo de Población y Vivienda 2012 Bolivia Características de la Población". Instituto Nacional de Estadística, República de Bolivia. p. 29.
  2. "Tsimané." Ethnologue. Retrieved 22 Feb 2012.
  3. "Chimane." Countries and Their Cultures. Retrieved 2 March 2012.
  4. Fundación UNIR (2009). Las identidades en las grandes regiones de Bolivia, Fascículo Nº2. La Paz, Bolivia: Fundación UNIR. pp. 19–20.
  5. Costas Monje, Patricia (January 1, 2001). "La pluriterritorialidad en el Norte de La Paz. Dos casos de estudio sobre defensa del territorio". In Chumacero, Juan (ed.). Reconfigurando territorios: Reforma agraria, control territorial y gobiernos indígenas en Bolivia. La Paz, Bolivia: Fundación Tierra. pp. 143–44.
  6. Sakel, Jeanette (2004) A grammar of Mosetén. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  7. Bottazzi, Patrick (2014) Une écologie politique des territoires tsimane' d'Amazonie bolivienne : notre grande maison. Institut des hautes études internationales et du développement, Genève (Suisse) ; Karthala, Paris.
  8. "The Tsimane' Amazonian Panel Study".
  9. "The UNM-UCSB Tsimane Health and Life History Project". Retrieved 2009-08-14.
  10. Gurven, Michael; Hillard Kaplan; Jeffrey Winking; Daniel Eid Rodriguez; Sarinnapha Vasunilashorn; Jung Ki Kim; Caleb Finch; Eileen Crimmins; Henry Harpending (2009). "Inflammation and Infection Do Not Promote Arterial Aging and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors among Lean Horticulturalists". PLOS ONE. 4 (8): e6590. Bibcode:2009PLoSO...4.6590G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006590. PMC 2722089. PMID 19668697. Retrieved 2009-08-14.
  11. "Age Doesn't Mean Heart Disease For Bolivian Tribe". Talk of the Nation. NPR. Retrieved 2009-08-14.
  12. Horvath S, Gurven M, Levine ME, Trumble BC, Kaplan H, Allayee H, Ritz BR, Chen B, Lu AT, Rickabaugh TM, Jamieson BD, Sun D, Li S, Chen W, Quintana-Murci L, Fagny M, Kobor MS, Tsao PS, Reiner AP, Edlefsen KL, Absher D, Assimes TL (2016). "An epigenetic clock analysis of race/ethnicity, sex, and coronary heart disease". Genome Biol. 17 (1): 171. doi:10.1186/s13059-016-1030-0. PMC 4980791. PMID 27511193.
  13. Preston, Elizabeth (28 April 2022). "The awake ape: Why people sleep less than their primate relatives". Knowable Magazine. Annual Reviews. doi:10.1146/knowable-042822-1. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  14. Yetish, Gandhi; Kaplan, Hillard; Gurven, Michael; Wood, Brian; Pontzer, Herman; Manger, Paul R.; Wilson, Charles; McGregor, Ronald; Siegel, Jerome M. (November 2015). "Natural Sleep and Its Seasonal Variations in Three Pre-industrial Societies". Current Biology. 25 (21): 2862–2868. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.046. PMC 4720388. PMID 26480842.
  15. Gallagher, James (20 November 2015). "Parasitic worm 'increases' women's fertility'". BBC News. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
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