Anthropologically, marriage involves a "culturally defined relationship between a man and woman from different families, which involves and regulates sexual intercourse and provides for reproduction; a set of rights the couple and their families obtain over each other, including rights over the couple's children; an assignment of responsibility for nurturing and enculturation children to the spouses and or to one or both sets of their relatives; and a creation of variably important bond and relationships between the families of the couple that have social, economic, political and sometimes ritual dimensions" (Peoples 2003:168)
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The Yanomamo live in the tropical rainforests of Brazil and Venezuela. Their villages are centered on Sierra Parima. The rainforests that the Yanomamo inhabit include both riverine lowland and tropical highland. Both habitats contain huge vine-covered trees and are relatively free of underbrush. These habitats are Warm and damp all year round. (Smoles 1976:7).
The Yanomamo as a culture has found a way to adapt to their environment. They intensively utilize the land directly around their villages. Since there food becomes scarce a couple of times a year, the developed the adaptive behavior of trekking. I found in my research that trekking is an extended camping trip lasting anywhere form a couple of weeks to a couple of months. This requires the entire village to travel as a whole or in smaller units. Trekking allows them to supplement their garden diet with protein, which is found more easily farther from the village. Trekking also allows different groups within the village to explore possible cultivation sites and split off into new village groups (Salomone1997, 36).
While over viewing both the Yanomamo culture, I found many different important facts about kinship in this culture that might relate to other cultures in different parts of this world.
