LIFE HISTORY AND REAL LIFE: AN EXAMPLE OF NEUROANTHROPOLOGY IN ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA

Abstract

A recent conceptual reworking of the developmental origins of health and disease model that places it within a life history framework is used to interpret some of the history of people living today in the remote Arnhem Land community of Numbulwar. This approach suggests some of the means by which their past circumstances may have had an impact on their current health. A combination of history, ethnography, and the neurobiology of stress and pregnancy provides a neuroanthropological approach for considering the manner in which environmental stressors, particularly those of social origin, may have intergenerational consequences for health.