1994 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 51-70
The present paper intends to illustrate how human cognition has co-evolved with the selection of diverse domesticates, by examining the ethnographic materials from the Bodi (Me?en) in southwest Ethiopia. The color polymorphism is said to be one of the most distinguished characteristics of those domesticates. This may be a result of not only the intention that man would control the animal and plant reproduction, but also the way in which he has recognized various phenotypes of genetic variants and included them into his culture. That is, the color polymorphism that arose in the process of domestication is needed for the cultural phenomena of human beings as well as the biological ones of animals and plants.
In East Africa including Ethiopia and Sudan, we can find tremendous varieties of animal coat-color as well as of sorghum. The author made an intensive survey among the Bodi, who depend mainly on cattle and goats together with sorghum, from the cultural anthropological point of view in 1973-6 and 1991. He has found several significant points on the interrelationship between human cognition and color polymorphism
1) The color-pattern cognition among the Bodi is formed on the basis of their folk classification of cows with reference to their coat colors.
2) The cattle are named on the basis of their coat colors, and they are genealogically traced even over sixteen generations.
3) Most of the cases of crossing are recognized and remembered as long as the Bodi keep their cattle in their compound. They have constructed their own folk genetics by countless observations, namely the cognition of crossing and the resultant hybrids from generation to generation. The Bodi are able to predict, by means of their folk genetics, what kinds of animal coat-color will be the result from crossing some kinds of animal coat-color. Their folk genetics has been recently verified by animal geneticist, Nozawa (in press).
4) The Bodi identify themselves with the cattle and sorghum through particular colors of variation, which are decided by their naming system, and also use animals according to their coat-colors at various kinds of rituals (Table 5).
5) In order to produce offspring with particular kinds of coat-colors for their identification and their usage at rituals, the Bodi keep the bulls with particular coat-colors in their compound.
It is quite obvious that many kinds of animal coat-color as well as sorghum are indispensable to the Bodi society. Without such variations, it is doubtful that the Bodi could exist socially and culturally. We may say that the Bodi people promoted the diversified selection of animal coat-colors as well as sorghum color by their own cultural devices. Such a study on color polymorphism in contemporary societies may make an important contribution to the analysis not only of the process of domestication, but also of the interrelationship between nature and culture in human society.
