Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies

A founder of the field of modern ethnobiology examines the widespread regularities in the classification and naming of plants and animals among peoples of traditional, nonliterate societies - regularities that persist across local environments, cultures, societies and languages. Brent Berlin maintains that these patterns can best be explained by the similarity of human beings' largely unconscious appreciation of the natural affinities among groupings of plants and animals: people recognize and name a grouping of organisms quite independently of its actual or potential usefulness or symbolic significance in human society.