Project Home

The Tsimane Health and Life History Project is a joint health and anthropology project aimed at understanding the impacts of ecology and evolution on the shaping of the human life course. We focus on health, growth and development, aging, economics and biodemography of small-scale populations of hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists. We also combine biomedical and anthropological research with medical attention among Tsimane, an indigenous forager-farming group living in central lowland Bolivia in the Beni Department.

Research with the Tsimane of Amazonian Bolivia began in 2001 under the joint directorship of Michael Gurven (Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara) and Hillard Kaplan (Anthropology, University of New Mexico; Chapman University).