Indigenous Mathematics in the Amazon: Kinship as Algebra and Geometry Among the Cashinahua

Mauro W. B. Almeida ()
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Mauro W. B. Almeida: Universidade Estadual de Campinas

A chapter in Indigenous Knowledge and Ethnomathematics, 2022, pp 221-242 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The mathematical competence of non-literate cultures expressed in the design of complex sociological structures has been recognized since a path-breaking Appendix by the mathematician André Weil to Lévi-Strauss’s treatise on kinship structures. The import of Weil’s contribution was to highlight the role of symmetries underlying kinship structures and the algebraic concept of a group which can be seen as a general theory of symmetry. The kinship structure of the Cashinahua people who inhabit the south-western Brazilian Amazon is a unique example of symmetry in social organization. This point is illustrated here by means of a correspondence between the group of actions of Cashinahua kinship terms on Cashinahua name-sake classes, and of symmetries connecting graphic patterns, showing an underlying non-trivial structure known as a dihedral group.

Keywords: Structuralism; Kinship; Marriage; Klein group; Dihedral group; Cashinahua (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-97482-4_8

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-97482-4_8

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