TITLE:
Opportunity for the Operation of Natural Selection in a Contemporary Local Population (The Case of Slovincians, Poland)
AUTHORS:
Oskar Nowak, Grażyna Liczbińska, Janusz Piontek
KEYWORDS:
Crow’s Index; Mortality; Fertility; Ecology; Ethnicity; Disintegration
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Anthropology,
Vol.3 No.3,
July
12,
2013
ABSTRACT:
In research practice, it is possible to
observe natural selection at work by analysing fertility and mortality. Crow’s
index takes into account both of these vital statistics components and allows a
quantitative estimation of the
operation of natural selection on the basis of demographic birth and death
figures. In this study, we use the classical Crow’s index to determine whether
the disintegration of the Slovincian population in the second half of the 20th century was
caused by factors of a biological nature, finally leading to disturbances in
the reproductive strategy, or whether it was a result of the impact of many
factors of a cultural nature. Use
was made of measuring cards for 109 women and 38 men. The sample was divided
into two generations: 1st generation, or individuals born up to the year 1900,
and 2nd generation—those born after1900. Inthis material the
opportunity for the operation of natural selection due to differential
mortality and differential fertility was rather weak. Both generations of
Slovincians were characterized by high fertility, suggesting their
non-Malthusian type of reproductive strategy, and decreasing mortality of
sexually immatures over time.It seems, therefore, that the loss of ethnic
identity by Slovincians and their migration from the home territories was
influenced by several factors of a cultural nature rather than their biological
distinctness.