Cognitive Space Concerning Habitual Thought and Practice Toward Animals Among the Central San (|Gui and ||Gana):Deictic/Indirect Cognition and Prospective/Retrospective Intention

Abstract

Three fields in which the Central San (|GUI and ||Gana) think and act with regard to animals are investigated; 1)interpretations on peculiar features of game animals, 2) ethno-ornithology, and 3) food taboo and avoidance. The hunters interpret peculiar behavior or appearance of animals in terms of some influential process that acts beyond mechanical causality. They also retrospectively connect a strange phenomenon with a human death. Birdsongs are sometimes believed to imply a prediction concerning the outcome of hunting. A number of folk-tales explain the origin of salient habits and morphology of specific bird species. Privileged enjoyment of some kinds of meat by elder people is the principal factor that organizes the food taboo. Most women consistently avoid the meat of carnivorous animals, while a wide variation is found in the men's accounts of what carnivores to avoid. The |Gui and ||Gana's knowledge, belief, and practice concerning animals are schematized by the theoretical model of cognitive space, which is divided by two intersecting coordinates; deictic vs. indirect cognition and prospective vs. retrospective intention. The beliefs organizing the meat taboo and avoidance are based on embodied experience, which is different from deictic identification, and no more amenable to indirect cognition.