Abstract
Previous studies described the active daily lives and various daily behaviors for children of pygmy hunter-gatherers, however, there were only a few studies which reported daily physical activities and time-space using quantitatively for hunter-gatherers’ children. This study aimed to clarify following three topics for children of pygmy hunter-gatherers: (1) daily physical activities, (2) time-space use and (3) relationship between physical activities and time-space using. A field survey was conducted on 44 Baka children (28 boys and 16 girls) in a same village located southeast Cameroon. GPS log tracks were obtained from all 44 children, and acceleration monitoring were performed for 21 children each for consecutive 3 days. Baka children showed a generally high level of physical activity. They walked more than 20,000 steps per day (boys: 25,331 ± 9,348, girls: 22,400 ± 4,258), and the mean of their estimated PALs (boys: 2.08 ± 0.21, girls: 2.10 ± 0.15) were classified “vigorous.” Total travel distances and active radii were become significantly greater as their age increased, and a dispersion was appeared in older boys. The sex-/age- difference for daily time-space using were observed from GPS log data, moreover, it was considered that boys changed their daily lives greater than girls as they grew up. In addition, it was suggested that activities outside of their own village were related to increasing children’s physical activities.
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Hagino, I., Yamauchi, T. (2014). Daily Physical Activity and Time-Space Using of Pygmy Hunter-Gatherers’ Children in Southeast Cameroon. In: Akazawa, T., Ogihara, N., C Tanabe, H., Terashima, H. (eds) Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans Volume 2. Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54553-8_10
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