Anthropologists have long believed the impulse to dance or sing a lullaby is universal. But a study focused on the Northern Aché, an Indigenous tribe of 800 in the forests of eastern Paraguay, is turning that assumption on its head. That's because the Northern Aché, who split from the Southern Aché in the early 19th century, don't dance and when they sing, it's never directed at infants, researchers say, per the Washington Post. This suggests dancing and singing lullabies are not inherent behaviors but must be learned. It also indicates "cultural trauma and loss can silence even the most human of traditions," per ZME Science.
Researchers including Arizona State University anthropologist Kim Hill, who lived among the Northern Aché during decades of fieldwork between 1977 and 2020, suspect the group lost aspects of complex culture while experiencing a population bottleneck with disease and displacement in the 20th century, according to a study published last month in Current Biology. While the Southern Aché still engage in dance and group song, the Northern Aché do not, per ZME Science. "Excluding church singing introduced by missionaries, Northern Aché adults sing alone and in a very limited number of styles," according to the study.
"Aché parents still calm fussy infants," study co-author Manvir Singh, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis, says in a release. But that's done with "playful speech, funny faces, smiling and giggling." Researchers maintain there is likely "a universal psychological capacity for dance and infant-directed song," per the study. However, observations indicate "cultural transmission matters much more for maintaining those behaviors than many researchers, including myself, have suspected," says Singh. (More anthropology stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
