Analyzing 632 vernacular water supply records from eHRAF World Cultures, the author identified twelve different ecological wisdom (EW) strategies that she believes have the potential to conserve socio-ecological water systems, repair the negative effects of climate change, and hopefully lead to long-term resilience. In this chapter she focuses on two of these strategies in particular; matching sources and uses, and using soil and vegetation to preserve water quality. The chapter posits that these two strategies may prove to be especially useful solutions for an array of highly impacted regions.

This chapter comes from a book chiefly concerned with the issue of "ecological wisdom." The concept of ecological wisdom is defined as historical and contextual knowledge about both a local environment and the systems and relationships present in that environment. In this chapter, the author is specifically interested in ways that ecological wisdom is involved with water conservation strategies. To this end, the author collected 1012 records of water systems from eHRAF World Cultures which were qualitatively coded into 12 types of ecologically wise water conservation strategies. Two of these strategies are then explored in detail.

This article explores determinants of non-classical polyandry, which the authors assert is more common than is usually conveyed. Results indicate that societies with non-classical polyandry tend to be small scale and egalitarian, practice hunting and gathering or horticulture, and have a male-skewed sex ratio. Overall polyandry is thought to add to the reproductive fitness of both men and women.

This study explores predictors of variation in two dimensions of marital residence patterns among hunter-gatherers: 1) the tendency toward patrilocality versus matrilocality and 2) the tendency toward unilocality versus bilocality.

The present research investigates food sharing and labor sharing practices of 98 nonindustrial societies. The aims are to: 1) document the frequency and scope of sharing, and 2) test the theory that greater sharing is adaptive in societies subject to more resource stress (including natural hazards).

This study looks at the possibility of a universal system of social valuation by examining the correlation between shame and devaluation. Researchers conducted an experiment among 899 participants from 15 communities of high cultural variation in order to test if similar relationships between shame and devaluation exist independently of cultural contact or cultural evolution. The findings reveal that shame and devaluation are closely linked both between individuals and members of a local audience, as well as cross-culturally.

The Trivers-Willard hypothesis posits that concentrations of human milk immune factors vary with maternal condition (maternal diet diversity and body mass index) and the sex of the infant. Using linear mixed-effects models to analyze 358 milk samples from 10 international sites, the authors find minimal support for the Trivers-Willard hypothesis; only one immune factor, IgG, exhibited a significant relationship.

This article uses the Standard Cross-Cultural Samples to test the relationship between disease and economic growth among sub-Saharan African societies. The authors suggest that a higher disease prevalence limits social integration and economic development since pre-colonial times. The variable measuring economic growth is the complexity of large or impressive structures. The hypotheses are that 1) pathogen stress is negatively correlated to the presence of complex buildings, and 2) pathogen stress is positively correlated to increased ethnic diversity. The results support both hypotheses, and there are additional results, like 1) the negative correlation between pathogen stress and current income per capita and 2) the negative correlation between the increased ethnic diversity and current income per capita. Overall, this article shows the robust relationship between disease and economic development.

This study relates the type of games present in a society to the level of cultural complexity. Authors use a "game-type combination scale" that categorizes societies as having: 1) games of physical skill only; 2) games of physical skill and games of chance; and 3) games of physical skill, games of chance, and games of strategy. Results show a relationship between the game-type combination scale and indicators of cultural complexity.

This article considers the consequences of modernization. Factor analysis is used to identify four stages of modernization: 1) changes in education, government, and trade; 2) changes in health, technology, and transportation; 3) changes in family, religion, and toilet; and 4) changes in behavior. The authors then consider five trends they expect to be associated with modernization and test whether they develop over the course of the four stages. Results indicate that these 5 trends—increased cultural complexity, female status, pacification, suicide, and social stress—are associated with only the first and fourth stages.