www.UsHumans.net: Chapter 8
Primate social systems, and the origins of our emotions, morals, and language
Primates are a subcategory of mammals that include monkeys and apes. There are hundreds of monkey species but only a handful of ape species, consisting of humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. In the previous chapters we found that mammals are distinguished from other animals by their parenting behaviors. In most ways, the daily behavior of primates consists of the same activities as all other mammals: feeding, play, communication, relations with others of the same group and of other groups of the same species, defense against predators, reproduction, and child rearing and training. In this chapter, we will see that primates differ from the other mammals in that they form more complex social systems and that these are based on the extended family. Rather than a dominance hierarchy of individuals, primate society consists of a dominance hierarchy of families.
Primates and their social groups are unique in that each individual recognizes the other members of its extended family. We recognize our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents and such. Other mammals do not do this. Of all the members of the community, we cooperate first with our extended family members. Our family relations form a large part of what it is to be human.
Notice also that as extended family relations began to occur, such a sizeable increase in social system complexity would occur simultaneously with an increase in intelligence. It takes added intelligence to recognize and track not only your own extended family but also who is related to whom throughout your group. The two largest differences between primates and the other mammals are their cooperating, extended families and their increased intelligence. The increased intelligence of primates is seen in many of their daily behaviors.
Primates simultaneously developed a complex social system and the emotions, behaviors, and morals to produce that social system. Being a social species means that we feel a strong urge to live in groups of individuals who participate in a mutually beneficial exchange of assistance; we exchange assistance in any way that benefits both of the participating individuals or families. A social species and this "Golden Rule" occur together, that is, neither occurs without the other. It is no accident that this remains to be the central issue in today's religions.
In daily practice, being a social species means that we exchange help on any task deemed larger than can be accomplished by one individual alone. In Chapter 15, we'll see how individuals and families within farming communities exchange daily assistance in any task that requires the efforts of more than a single individual or family. Our social system is this exchange of help, whether it is watching for predators, cooperating as an extended family to obtain the best mating opportunities, the gathering of several families to harvest a crop, or the pooling of efforts to build civilization. In today's big cities, we still innately exchange assistance in any way in which we see it is needed. Not only does the social system include this exchange, it is this exchange.
In this chapter we also ask "Where did our emotions and morals come from?" We sometimes find it difficult to look inside ourselves and discern the fundamental purpose of our emotions and behaviors and to see which of them are more fundamental. Our morals and emotions are important elements of what it is to be human. We have gained crucial clues to the answers to these questions from the recent scientific studies that will be described in this chapter.
As you read this chapter try to decide whether our social system, emotions, morals, ethics, and language are innate features of our biological heritage or whether they are learned behaviors that we invented long ago and have been passing on to each new generation. Scientists debate whether genes or learning plays the largest role in the development of each of our behaviors. It is difficult to know for certain which behaviors are innate and which are learned.
We are often surprised at the things that have been found to be purely learned behaviors. For example, we have found that cats do not know that they are "supposed" to eat mice unless they are taught to do so by their mothers. As important as reproduction is to the continued existence of our species, it is surprising to learn that people do not know how sexual intercourse is done until another person tells them; this is not innate knowledge. A newborn mammal is genetically programmed to assume that the first thing it sees will be its mother. This is usually the case out in the wilderness but scientists have found that in the lab the newborn will take up just about anything as its mother. Which of your own behaviors are learned and which are innate? Do we learn to smile, have tempers, play, or hunt? When and why did we begin to be able to speak?
It is difficult to imagine what our lives would be like if we couldn't verbally communicate with other persons. Its also hard to imagine not having our inner-voice constantly speaking within our own head. I imagine that words are actually redundant afterthoughts to an original thought. We all pull our hand back from a hot object without first holding an internal conversation about it with ourselves. When we feel thirsty, we will drink whether or not were able to say the word to express the feeling to others. Actions follow feelings, emotions, and thought processes without having any internal verbal conversation–even for dogs and cats. One could actually live his or her entire life without this level of communication. We could learn by watching our parents, we could fall in love, chose a spouse, and in turn teach our own children how to live–all without words. In fact, we lived for millions of years without today's level of verbal communication, as other animals still do.
Today we experience a complex feeling and then search from a list of words others have used when expressing what we think likely had been a similar feeling for them–for example, being exhilarated, feeling dread, or anxiousness. (How many emotional states have we named? ) We are able to communicate these states because we share a common human nature, but words are not needed to generate or to experience our feelings–or to make plans or carry out actions. We are adept at noticing what others are doing or feeling–and what they are saying while they are doing or feeling it. The same sort of thing is occurring when we “notice” that a group of persons uses a particular fashion to say "I'm one of that group."
Our use of language is an important part of our lives. Is our use of language built on prior innate communication abilities of primates? Of mammals? Do chimpanzees have any ability to communicate with others? The scientific studies involving the language abilities of apes give important clues to our own nature that we could not obtain in any other manner. As it has been said, if there were no other apes to study, we would have been limited to simply sitting in our arm chairs trying to deduce logically how it is that we came to acquire language but sea-lions did not.
Some indications of our close relationship to the other primates include the following. There are striking similarities between us humans and our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. For example, the head of a chimpanzee infant has much the same shape as that of a human infant (this can be seen in a video clip at www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_paniscus/Pan_paniscus_09b.html?movietype=rpMed). When you see a group of primates interacting socially, do you see any similarities to the social interactions of a group of humans–for example, of parents supervising children playing in a park? In Carl Sagan's book The Dragons of Eden, he states that a monkey's two worst fears are snakes and falling from a tree and that we humans today show our primate ancestry by having these same nightmares. In Consilience The Unity of Knowledge Edward O. Wilson explains our genetically based fear of snakes and our cultural elaborations of this fear.
Do you feel that we show an ancient and basic attachment to trees when we say “That tree has character in the way its thick, central branches spread into more curvy branches” or in our commonly held respect and awe of trees. Trees comprise an important element of traditional religions–more so than do bushes and other items not of interest to primates. Which does a deer prefer, trees or bushes? Which do primates prefer? The shape of the Bodhi tree seems to appeal to many of us (under one of which sat Buddha). Fresh water springs are similarly regarded–and were also very important to our biological ancestors. Do such appeals exist because of our primate and animal nature? Why do we like waterfalls? Do these things evoke within us today the same feelings as they did in our ancestors a few million years ago?
The beginning of this chapter contains a summary of the ideas presented in Primate behavior: information, social knowledge, and the evolution of culture, by Diane Quiatt and Vernon Reynolds. For the remainder of the details you should read their entire book. The comparison between chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans is a summary of Bonobo, the Forgotten Ape by Frans De Waal and Frans Lanting. The origins of our behaviors are described in Good Natured, the Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, also by Frans De Waal. If you want to know about the core of our being, this is the very next book you should read. I give a limited summary of his ideas here. This chapter also contains summaries of two important books about the origins of our emotions and our language: Why We Feel, The Science of Human Emotions by Victor S Johnston; and Kanzi, The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind, by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin.
Social system of nonprimate mammals
Some mammals live their lives as lone individuals and do not have daily contact with other members of their species. When several members of a species live together in a group there is some sort of social system. The members may work together to notice or to ward off predators and to find food.
For many mammals, the social system often consists of a dominance hierarchy. The group is headed by the most dominant individual–the pack leader or so-called alpha individual. Within the group, each pair of individuals form a mutual agreement about who will have priority access to food and potential mates and such. This agreement begins during their adolescent encounters and continues to mature as they mature. The agreement determines which individual will back down during future encounters. This is not a static arrangement because the hierarchical rankings do shift through time and conditions of health.
The hierarchy serves to reduce conflict among group members. This is a better solution than having each encounter result in a fight to the death because there would soon be only one individual of the species left alive and the species would disappear from the earth. When the members of a species do not fight to the death then those members are more likely to live long enough to have children.
The group consists of numerous individuals. We might choose to identify these members by numbering them according to their ranking in the dominance hierarchy. For the case of a group of one-hundred individuals, they can be hierarchically numbered from one to one hundred. The meaning of the numbering system is that individual number five always acts dominant to individuals six through one hundred and always acts submissive to individuals one through four. When a pair of individuals approaches an item of mutual interest, such as food, then the higher ranking individual takes the item and the other moves on.
The group also consists of several families. The most dominant individual, who is the group’s alpha member, might be a member of family A while the next three most-dominant individuals might be members of families B, C, and D. The group members interact as pairs of individuals and do not cooperate as members of particular families.
The social system of primates is much more complicated; this difference gives us an important clue about our own nature. Primates differ from other mammals in that they live in social groups based on the extended family. Within a group of primates, each individual recognizes the other members of its extended family and the entire extended family cooperates as a unit. Primate individuals also recognize the extended family of every other individual within the group. We recognize and assist our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and grandparents and such. Our family relations form a large part of being a human. Primate individuals know the members of their extended family: other mammals do not. Primate social systems are the most complex because there is extensive cooperation among related individuals.
In a primate social system, the group is not lead by a single individual, the "pack leader" at the top of the dominance hierarchy, but is instead lead by the members of the dominant extended family. This means that the members of one family are dominant to the members of all other families. Even adults back down to youngsters of the dominant family.
The social system of the macaque monkeys can be used as an illustrative example of a primate system. See www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Macaca_sinica/more_moving_images.html for videos. A group of macaque monkeys consists of a number of families who live together. The female members of an extended family include aunts, cousins, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters. As the male members of the group reach the age of sexual maturity they migrate to other neighboring groups. This means that the non-infant male members of a group are strangers; they are not brothers, uncles, or grandfathers. The female members are related to a number of the other females, and these related females help each other. There is a mutually beneficial exchange of assistance among the related females in obtaining the best mating opportunities and in obtaining access to the best food areas and such.
The group consists of many such female families but one family has dominance over all others. That is, all of the aunts, cousins, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters of one family are dominant to all of the other females. Through the years, this dominance will shift from one family to another. The dominant group is the one with the largest number of healthy, mature females of childbearing age. A mature non dominant female will back down to all of the members of the dominant family, even to the youngsters. For example, a ten-year-old non-dominant female will move away from a food source when a two-year-old member of the dominant family approaches.
These groups of related and cooperating females are called matrilineages in humans and matrilines in other primates. These are mutually beneficial help-alliances. In some primate societies, females emigrate upon reaching sexual maturity. In this case the males may form cooperating patrilines but these have never been found to be ranked by dominance.
The dominance hierarchy of primate families does not mean there is no cooperation among unrelated individuals. It means individuals will not fight over certain things that are of mutual interest. For example, all group members cooperate in finding food sources but once it is found the dominance hierarchy determines who gets to eat first. (Primates generally look for food as a group because it is found in group-sized bundles.) As you might expect, there is more fighting among the members of a family than there is between members of different families. These fights always end in a reconciliation because the relationship is mutually valued. Both members know they are better off with each other's assistance and support than if they try to go it alone or acquire an enemy.
Some species, including seals and sea lions, linger together in large groups but have little social interaction. A true society has a fixed membership and well-defined personal relationships among all members. For most nonprimate mammals, two individuals interact to form relationships that in turn form the social system, which is a dominance hierarchy. For primates, it is often the reverse in that the social structure governs relationships and interactions between individuals. For example, two particular primate families might interact in a certain way one day but differently one month later because of shifts in the hierarchy.
Mammals recognize distinct individuals by sight, sound, and smell. Nonprimate mammals recognize single individuals only but primates also recognize extended family structures. Each individual monitors the behavior of all other individuals and also the behavior of each pair of individuals. For example, before a macaque individual challenges a particular female, it needs to know which others will or will not come to that female's assistance. Primates recognize the family relationships between every pair within the group. These relations between individuals and families results in a wider range of social behaviors than occurs in a simpler dominance hierarchy composed of individuals only.
Complex social systems promote bigger brains, sympathy, empathy, and self-awareness
For us humans today, to “know” a person is to be able to predict his or her behavior in various situations. Similarly, to “know” the relationship between a pair of individuals is to be able to predict their behavior in various situations. We are naturally adept at doing this. It is something we do effortlessly because our brains have evolved to perform this specific task. We don’t struggle with it as we do when memorizing numbers or trying to multiply them together.
Social knowledge–the prediction of the behavior of others–builds bigger brains. It takes memory, learning, and intelligence for an individual to know who is related to whom and to know how an individual and its relatives will behave as different situations arise. If an individual could not keep track of this information then there would be no extended family cooperation and no social system based on the extended family. As a social system becomes more complicated, an increase in brain capacity would simultaneously occur. Increasingly complex behavior and increasing intelligence enable and promote each other. The steadily increasing brain size of our primate ancestors may have begun as the primate social system took on this added complexity. Simply having a more complex social system both requires and exhibits a bigger brain. Language is similarly complicated. Its use simultaneously builds on and builds up larger brains.
Pinker points out that keeping track of the give and take between you and each of those other individuals also requires an additional increase in intelligence. An "intelligence arms race" may have occurred between members of the group who did not want to be socially outmaneuvered or taken advantage of by “our brainy little cohorts.” We are experts at detecting possible cases of having been socially swindled by another individual. Each of us makes sure that the interactions of our society continue to be mutually beneficial for the interacting individuals.
An individual compares the current behavioral situation with memories of past behaviors in an attempt to predict the outcome of the current situation. To predict the social behavior of other individuals, it helps to put yourself in their place, imagine what they are experiencing, and then decide what you would do if you were them. This is empathy. Such imaginings also promote self-awareness. (Humans also try to extrapolate our own behavior onto inanimate objects and even onto natural phenomenon: this is closely related to our oldest religions.)
Self-awareness is observed in chimpanzees and in the other apes: when chimps are placed in front of a mirror, it takes just a few minutes for them to figure out that they are seeing themselves. They then spend a while examining inside their mouths, the top of their head, and everywhere else they couldn't see before. Monkeys never figure out that they are seeing their own image–or they just don't behave as humans do as their own image is recognized. One can put a red dot on the forehead of an animal and then place that animal in front of a mirror. We then watch to see whether the animal touches the dot in the mirror or the dot on its own head. Touching the dot on its own forehead shows that the animal understands that it is seeing its own image in the mirror. A chimp will touch the dot on its own forehead. The members of every ape species have been found to touch their own forehead while the members of every monkey species instead touch the dot in the mirror. (My younger brother tried to eat the red dot on his forehead but found he couldn't reach his forehead with his mouth no matter how fast he moved.)
The Biami people of Papua New Guinea had no natural materials, not even a lake, to use as a mirror. When an anthropologist first gave mirrors to them, the Biami were shocked and surprised to see their own images because they had never seen them. The then used the mirrors to examine the inside of their mouth and the top of their head and such.
We have the ability today to make and use tools. What does this ability say about the development of larger brains? Our stone tools were used to obtain food in the form of animal meat. Lions and wolves and such catch food by chasing it and then grabbing it with their own teeth. We use wits and tools. (We saw above that Homo habilis was our first ancestor to do this.)
Were our ancestors evolutionarily selected for their ability to make tools? Pinker points out that whenever a specific ability is needed and is selected for through the generations, the resulting animal will have an ability to do that one task but no others. He says that the specific ability to create stone tools is an unlikely target of natural selection.
Reasoning allows us to create tools. Our ability for general reasoning existed before we began obtaining food through reasoning. What is reasoning and how do our brains do it? You might like to read the books by Greenfield and Pinker for more clues. Is there any difference between social reasoning and the reasoning used in parenting, creating stone-tools, food collecting, predator avoidance, and modern engineering?
The use of stone tools to obtain an animal's meat, against its wishes, does not mean a whole lot to those of us who live in the big city. Many of us have never even seen a wild animal, much less tried to kill one using stone tools. A couple million years ago, our ancestors began to do this. A description of the hunting tactics of today's gatherer-hunters will help illustrate the difference in intelligence needed for the tactics of humans compared with those of lions and wolves and such. (I have heard a rumor that Alaskan bears will notice a person's repetitive schedule of returning home at the same time each day and may actually wait to ambush that person at that time.)
The next paragraphs illustrate the sort of tasks our brains handle. This is important. To get clues to our own nature, we want to notice those things our brains are made to do. We know our brain is made to do a particular task if we find that task is done effortlessly. To gauge the differences between us humans and another species, you might gauge the ease with which that species does these tasks.
How do humans go about hunting for food? In The wizard of the upper Amazon, F. Bruce Lamb gives some examples of how hunters in the Amazonian forest use their intelligence to harvest animals from a region. In his book he recalls the months he spent as a boy among the Amahuaca people during the early 1900s. The Amahuaca are a group of fifty to one hundred persons who live in a single village. Each family is allotted hunting, gathering, and farming areas around the village.
Before leaving camp to pursue a specific animal, hunters mask their own odors by rubbing their bodies with some roots; when hunting a specific animal, they cover their bodies with the scent of that animal. Next they do a dance, consume a potion, and then off they go. The hunter does not wander aimlessly in search of animals but instead harvests animals from the neighborhood. The hunter knows the sounds, footprints, activities, nesting habits, and favorite foods of each species of local animals he wants to eat. The hunter knows that if the leader of certain animal packs is stabbed or darted then there will be a few moments of confusion, giving time to shoot more. After spotting a monkey band in a distant tree top, the hunter will make the sound of a fallen baby monkey. This may bring the monkey troop close enough to be able to dart one. The hunter also knows to be aware of the seasonal condition of the monkey troop's favorite fruit trees and will wait near a just-ripening fruit tree for the arrival of the monkeys. Since jaguars are known to eat a certain bird, the hunter will sometimes attract a jaguar by making the sound of that bird. Fawns like to hide in a particular type of bush. When hunters see tracks around one of these bushes, they will wait nearby until the fawn returns. The hunter then shoots the fawn but leaves the mother unharmed so she can continue to produce more fawns in the future. Hunters also note the location of each hunted animal's favorite food source. Whenever they then hear a certain animal they want to catch, the hunters have only to walk toward that animal’s nearest food source. Similarly, the hunter will notice the favorite tree-stump of a local owl.
Upon return to the village, hunters discuss the amount of game and collectible food, any animal gathering or nest sites, the movements of the local bands of monkeys and of pigs, and any sightings of the neighboring peoples or strangers they've encountered. They then know which areas have more game and which have less. If one person is having bad luck at hunting or fishing, the others will examine and discuss that person's equipment and techniques. Youngsters are being trained as they listen to the daily discussions of hunting techniques and results and of animal tracks, behavior, and sounds. (It does not happen very often that these forest dwellers hear a sound that they cannot identify. An unidentifiable sound is assumed to come from a spirit.)
Similarly detailed knowledge is used in gathering edible plants from a region. The plant and animal contents within every footstep of the entire gathering and hunting area is mapped in this way. The food collectors do this for several hours per week throughout their lifetimes. Whenever you hear the word gatherer-hunter, you should think of the intelligence and the mass of knowledge of plants and of animal habits that the group uses in harvesting food along with the customs used to find, prepare, and to share that food. Those of us humans living as gatherer-hunters today make and use nets, hooks, rope, spears, and bowls and such and have complicated procedures to handle hundreds of daily needs. There are complicated procedures just to prepare otherwise inedible varieties of roots, nuts, and poisonous animals. (The next chapter contains a more-detailed look at the culture of another Amazonian group, the Kalapalo people.)
The techniques of the Amahuaca hunter illustrate what is meant by hunting with our brains rather than with our feet and teeth. Pinker explains that living by our wits in this way shows why so much intelligence was needed by our gatherer-hunter ancestors and what they were doing with it–even two million years ago. Plant and animal harvesting are tasks that our brains are made to do. The difference in food-getting techniques between humans and other animals tells us much about ourselves. We humans observe other animals and find exploitable behaviors. We also observe plant cycles. (The word-order in Ashley Montagu’s term gatherer-hunter refers to the fact that, for traditional peoples, the majority of food comes from gathering plants while hunting furnishes the lesser portion.)
Pinker wonders how complicated were the hunting tactics of each of our ancestral species–for example, afarensis–and how complicated were their tools that were not made of stone and so are not part of the archaeological record. As our tool-using, hominid ancestors first began to harvest (hunt) animals this way, they became further separated from the other ape species. Today’s chimpanzees are seen to cooperatively kill monkeys for food. This is done by having some group members drive a target monkey toward others waiting in ambush; lions employ a similar tactic. Is this a first step toward the more sophisticated animal harvesting technics of us humans?
How many days would it take for you to become very familiar with the plant and animal layout of your own neighborhood? It is a safe bet that you have already memorized the layouts of many streets and the aisle-by-aisle contents of many stores. Learning a layout is another of our effortless mental tasks. We have developed this ability because its need consistently existed through the generations and proved to be useful in the survival of our ancestors.
When we humans see animals, we naturally and effortlessly analyze their actions–we’ll say, “look at what that squirrel is doing.” Amahuaca hunters study mainly those aspects of animal behavior that enable them to be more skillful at animal harvesting, while modern biologists study every aspect of each animal–for example, its biochemistry. Today's city dwellers don't know much about animal behavior because they never see any animals. If hunters know little about the ways of their animal prey then they have little success at outwitting them.
The higher intelligence of primates results in some unusual daily behaviors not seen in other mammals. When introduced to them at an early age, apes have demonstrated the ability to distinguish shapes and colors, and spoken sounds, too. Monkeys are also able visually to distinguish shapes. Primates understand that movies represent reality. For example, when shown a video tape depicting food being placed in a certain location within an adjacent room (they are already familiar with that other room) they will run right over to the filmed spot and obtain the food. They will also remember the one who did wrong toward themselves or their relatives and seek revenge even after much time has passed. They learn from the misfortunes of others: if one chimp had been shot by a person from a truck, the others will run away whenever they see that truck returning. Chimps also like to look where another is looking or pointing.
Scientists are cautious about attributing thoughts or reasoning to nonhuman animals because it isn't readily possible to "read their minds" in repeatable measurements. Animal actions are most often explained as simple "robotic reactions." Only the most clever scientists have concocted experiments involving animal behavior that have no other possible interpretation but that thinking is occurring in the studied animals.
Deception is a behavior that is meant to fool others and unquestionably shows that thinking is occurring, but it is hard to arrange in a repeatable experiment. Leading others away from food that they hadn't seen so that you can return to get it, is an example of deceptive behavior (our dog Rowdy does this to my younger brother). Other examples of deception include not looking at food so as not to alert others of its presence so that you can have it for yourself, pretending to be hurt to get another into trouble, or pretending that there is something nearby to be afraid of so that someone else drops their food, which you then grab. Primates display many behaviors that indicate they are acting intentionally. They get others into trouble, they deceive, and they predict the behavior of others.
Certain birds species are seen to deceptively lure predators away from their nests by pretending to have a broken wing. Predators follow the seemingly injured parent away from its nest. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh wonders if this behavior is genetically innate or if it was invented in the past and then taught to successive generations. This sort of deceptive behavior is not easily repeated in the lab and so is not often reported in scientific literature. Sue was once seen Matata, who is a bonobo living in her lab, place a bowl into the hands of a visitor and then begin screaming as if that person had taken it from her.
Consciousness, self-awareness, emotions, our senses, and our language are also large parts of what it is that makes us human. A certain level of consciousness, self-awareness, and language is sometimes taken as a criterion for humanness. Does self-awareness exist in other animals? Is it merely less pronounced than it is in us humans? Each comparison between us and other animals may indicate shared characteristics that simply differ in magnitude–as our common ancestry would produce. (We saw that all mammals share so much in common that humans and mice share 85% of their genetic makeup.) We are all familiar wit the difference in magnitudes of abilities for smell and speech in humans and dogs. A dog's sense of smell is one-million times more sensitive than ours, while we understand 10,000 times as many spoken words as does a dog. But it isn't the case that humans can't smell and that dog's can't communicate.
The social systems of common chimpanzees and Bonobos
We would like to know when and why our social system developed into its current form. It has been observed that the social system of each primate species is adapted to fit its own environment of food, predators, and climate. Our own social system formed on the drying East-African savanna yet we can see that it shares much with those of other primates. Our extended family and our monogamous parenting strategy form a large part of what it is to be human.
Today the African savanna is occupied by baboons, which are a monkey species. Are there any similarities between our ancestor's society and that of today's savanna baboons? The savanna baboons form a male-dominated and aggressive society. Males cooperate in hunting for meat but compete for control of the harem and have become twice the size of females.
We obtain important clues about the reasons our own social system has taken on its particular form by comparing it with those of other ape species–especially those of our two closest relatives, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo chimpanzee. (We'll refer to the common chimpanzees more-simply as "chimpanzees," and the bonobo chimpanzees as "bonobos.") Frans De Waal and Frans Lanting compare our social systems with these two apes in Bonobo, the Forgotten Ape. You might like to read their entire book to learn more of the details than are given in the following short summary. Listen to Frans de Waal give a talk about chimpanzee politics at www.itconversations.com/shows/detail231.html. See bonobo and chimpanzee photos at www.worldwildlife.org/apes/bonobo.cfm and www.worldwildlife.org/apes/chimpanzee.cfm. Visit www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_paniscus/more_moving_images.html for several bonobo clips and visit www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_troglodytes/more_moving_images.html for several video clips of common chimpanzees.
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh points out that when a person looks face-to-face into the eye of one of these apes it is clear that this is another rational being with a powerful personality as complicated as our own. This contact is an experience never forgotten. Genetic studies indicate that about six million years ago, a common ancestral animal type diverged into the three lines that would become chimpanzee, bonobo, and human. We also see that humans and chimpanzees share 98% of their genes. The pre-human line lived on the drying East African savannah while the pre-chimpanzee line continued to live in the forest.
For the last fifty years, many scientists have been studying, comparing, and testing ape behavior, their social systems, and the interactions of individual apes within their social systems. Scientists do this by observing apes in their natural settings and following them through their daily movements and activities. Scientists stand near the edge of a group of apes in the wild and observe their social interactions. They do this day after day. At first the apes would keep away from the scientists, but after they came to know that the scientists posed no threat they stopped running away and just went on with their daily activities. Scientists also observe these apes within large zoo groupings. It has been found that their social behavior in the zoo is much the same as their behavior in their own, natural setting. In a large number of ways, their behavior is also similar to our own.
During their lengthy observations, scientists become familiar with many individual animals and know which individuals are related to which of the others. Observations of the group of individuals are made for many years, and thousands of interactions between individuals are recorded. It would be like writing each of your minute-by-minute social interactions down in your daily dairy. The amount of data collected for each individual primate is enough to write complete biographies. It's easy to see that these measurements can go on for much of a scientist's lifetime. This is the reason that the results they present carry some weight. We can all ask endless questions about "isn't this behavior due to this or that" but their level of understanding is the result of more-thorough study and knowledge of individuals. Without that bulk of information it would be like a stranger's poor attempt to explain your friend's behavior in general terms without having complete understanding of her specific personality.
These studies tell us much about ourselves. One important finding has been that core aspects of our own society are seen in those of the other primates. The social life of each primate species includes differing levels of bonding, altruism, alliance formation, power struggles, disputes, and reconciliations. The society of each species has unique features due to their differing current and past environments of predators, food, and climate. When we come to understand why ape social systems differ from one species to another then we can begin to see what sort of factors might have occurred to make our own system different from each of these others.
These primate studies find many behaviors that are not all that unfamiliar to us. Infants suck their thumbs, and they merely have to hold out their hand to bring mom back to them. Youngsters are seen to pout, whimper, and yelp. If these tactics don't work they might try throwing a temper tantrum. Adults sometimes resort to a temper tantrum if another individual doesn't share food with them or after losing a fight. They laugh coarsely when another tickles their bellies or armpits. They hold out their hand to ask for food. Chimpanzees kiss. Bonobo chimpanzees rub their tongues together while they are kissing.
They use our own familiar facial expressions to communicate happiness, play, disappointment, frustration, or the desire for contact. They have a friendly smile and a fearful grin that shows lots of teeth, sort of the way Daffy Duck does it when he is in trouble. Young chimps like to make funny faces. Sometimes they will reach around the back of their head to pull open their cheek, while at other times they will suck in their cheeks or bulge their upper lip and shake their jaw rapidly.
A typical observation of an adolescent chimpanzee male might find him teasing an old and slow female by throwing dirt at her. She might not be able to grab him at that moment but later–even an hour later–she will catch him when he isn't looking and give him a return bite. He will then run to his aunt and act as if he didn't deserve this punishment. Next, he'll walk a wide circle around the previously teased female to get to her son so that he can play with him–while keeping a close eye on her movements. Soon the teaser and the teased have made up (reconciled) and are grooming each other. There is not much difference between the behavior of juvenile apes and that of our own children at the playground. They each will laugh and squabble and get their mothers involved. Visit www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_troglodytes for several video clips of chimpanzees.
Both bonobos and chimpanzees are found in African forests but bonobos live where these are thicker, with more plentiful food. The society of both bonobos and chimpanzees consist of 25 to 120 individuals who form a large community. The members of this large community separate into many smaller groups to search for food. For every social species, the size of a group must be large enough to provide protection from predators but small enough that there is enough food for all. Chimpanzee groups contain about six individuals while bonobo groups contain twenty–even more when lots of food is available. (Grazing herds of thousands of individuals have food everywhere, and it is equally accessible to all.)
A particular individual spends a little time first with one small group and then switches to another. That individual might choose to switch groups by the hour or by the day. Only mothers and dependent children remain together always as they form the core of society. An entire community of one hundred bonobos might nest together at night. Each individual forms a nest by pulling some leafy branches together up in a tree. An individual does not disturb others who are nesting. There are other neighboring communities but none of them mix by day or by night. As females reach puberty, they will leave their original community and move (emigrate) into a neighboring one to avoid inbreeding.
Before scientists could understand this arrangement of many groups within a community and of females emigrating to other neighboring communities, they had to know and track many individual chimpanzees for many years. All that was seen at first were hundreds of nearly identical looking chimpanzees within a region. Can you make any sense out of the collection of individual squirrels or birds in your neighborhood?
We next have a closer look at each of chimpanzee and bonobo society. The large differences between the two give us some idea of the possible range in social systems of closely related primate species. We want to see what these social systems can tell us about the social system of our early ancestors.
The males of chimpanzee society form a dominance hierarchy. The top or alpha male is the only one to mate with the females. Females raise their young with little assistance from the males whose only contribution is to occasionally play with the youngsters. When chimpanzees find food, it is shared by all members of the group, but the most dominant male gets the first portion. He then shares first with his male allies and next with the females who are currently in oestrus.
Chimpanzees are tool users. They are seen to prepare tool twigs by striping away leaves and then inserting them inside a termite nest. (You can view video clips of this tool-use at the ARKive Images of Life on Earth website, see www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_troglodytes/Pan_troglodytes_tr_08a.html, and at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_chimps.html.) As termites walk onto this twig, the chimp pulls it out so he or she can eat those termites. Chimps will also use a stick to reach things. They crack nuts with rocks and they teach this technique to their infants. Chimps use leaves as sponges to absorb water to drink from tree-holes. Certain zoo chimps use a pepper-half as a water scoop. Until a hundred years ago, we humans still knew to crack walnuts between flat rocks and to form leaves into drinking cups while at a stream. (These things are described in Gleanings From Long Ago by Ellen Mordecai and The Blessed Town, Ofxord, Georgia, at the Turn of the Century by Polly Stone Buck.)
Chimpanzees engage in elaborate power struggles. The key to becoming the alpha male is to form an alliance with one or two other males and then challenge the current leader. (Notice that this is done without the use of spoken language.) A male will challenge the alpha by dragging a stick or leafy branch, see www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_troglodytes/Pan_trogiodytes_sc_12a.html?movietype=rpMed. He will shake it, slap it against the ground, and drag it around while making lots of noise. The challenger gets his friends to join in while the alpha male is busy getting his own friends to join in. There will be screaming and barking and shifting alliances in a spectacle that might last thirty minutes. If the alpha continues to run away then the challenger will continue to make future attacks. It is not over until one assumes a submissive posture toward the other. Now that they agree on rank they will make up by hugging, kissing, and grooming, see www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_paniscus/Pan_paniscus_05.html?movietype=rpMed. If the challenger was successful then his behavior will change from aggression to tolerance. There can be internal competition and power politics, but there must also be unity in the community because the lives of each group member depends on the continued existence of the community. Also, as mentioned in Chapter 7, a new alpha male might kill infants so that their mothers will more-quickly return to oestrus. He will then impregnate these females with his own offspring. Females with new infants will avoid the group for a while to avoid this potential danger.
Chimpanzee males cooperate in hunting small monkeys. To catch their prey, some of the hunters drive a monkey group in a desired direction while others block them from taking escape routes. When a monkey is caught, the meat is divided between the participating males and the non hunting females. For a video, see www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_troglodytes/Pan_trogiodytes_sc_08d.htm=?movietype=rpMed. The males also cooperate in defending their territory against neighboring communities. The most cooperative species are seen to have the most formalized hierarchies.
There is a wide range in primate societies. Do you recognize any part of our own social system in that of the chimpanzees? Is their social system similar to that of our ancestors? The common chimpanzees and the bonobo chimpanzees are our two closest, biological relatives. The social systems of these two are similar in many ways but are also very different from each other. The bonobos and their social system are described next.
Many bonobo actions, such as those following, show thoughts similar to our own and may demonstrate empathy and sympathy. One bonobo surprised a bird and caught it. He then carried it to the top of a tree, held out its wings, and tossed it up to fly away. When one bonobo saw that an infant was thirsty, it filled its own mouth with water and then walked over to the infant to give it the water. Group members will help an old member get to another place. It is seen that bonobos treat a sleeping nest as a private space in that they never enter another's nest unless invited.
Bonobos easily walk upright, often while carrying food. (Is this why we initially did that?) For a video, visit www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_paniscus/Pan_paniscus_06a.html?movietype=rpMed. This has made their legs larger than their arms, like ours, and their backs straighter and more human-like. In contrast, chimpanzee arms and legs and more-equally sized because they are more-equally used.
Since the forest is much thicker where the bonobo live, they communicate more vocally than visually. Chimpanzees will call only to intimidate, when seriously alarmed, or when aroused by food, but bonobos vocalize constantly and for the slightest reason. They vocalize back and forth as rapidly as ping pong, in turn, and without interrupting each other. Bonobo voices are more highly pitched than are those of chimpanzees. The difference between chimpanzee and bonobo pitch is about the same as the difference between those of a man and a boy. In the attempts of scientists to teach human language to various species, Bonobos have done the best in listening to our voice and learning to use language; Kanzi is a bonobo whom we will meet in the discussion of language below. Visit www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Pan_paniscus for video clips of bonobos.
In most every animal species, males are larger than females. Competing males often have horns, tusks, or fangs. Females usually do not have these things at all or have more-reduced versions. Males sometimes rudely take advantage of their larger size by pushing females away from food and such. The only mammal species not having a system of male dominance are lemurs, spotted hyenas, and bonobos. Which is the dominant sex in human societies? Is it the same in every human society around the world and throughout history?
Bonobo society is female-centered, with smaller females dominating males. When bonobos find food, females share it first as they cement their relationships. When a chimpanzee female is placed with a male bonobo in a zoo, she quickly learns that she can try to dominate him; but she knows not to try this with a chimpanzee male. (We too learn very quickly what each and every individual will or will not allow during our interactions, and we customize our behavior with each individual.)
Bonobo males do compete over status but lack any formalized ritual of dominance and submission. Every group member knows for certain which male is the alpha but the other positions are more vague. An aggressive encounter between two bonobo males isn't at all like the lengthy and noisy spectacles of chimpanzees. These encounters end as the two make up, which they do by rubbing their scrotums together for about fifteen seconds. Male alliance formation is barely visible. Bonobos have no hunting parties so the males do not have this reason to bond. A new alpha takes over with the help of his mother. During the contest, the most critical confrontation is not between the two males but between their mothers. Sons of healthy females go far in bonobo society while orphans and sons of weak mothers do not. Females form bonds and alliances to control the alpha male; in bonobo society, males rule the world but females rule the males. (This is often said of our own society.)
Bonobo females, like chimpanzee females, emigrate to another community when they reach puberty. Since the adult females within a group have immigrated from another community, they are not related to each other. In chimpanzee society, it is the males who form bonds, while in bonobos it is the females who do so. The food abundance allows females to more easily associate and to form bonds. There is no highest ranking female but the oldest are usually more influential. The females of lowest status are those who have recently immigrated from another community; they try to keep a low profile.
Bonobos substitute sex for aggression; it is the glue of their society. In other species, sexual behavior is a distinct part of life, but for bonobos the two are indistinguishable. Social greeting, bonding, food sharing, and making-up is done by having sex for about fifteen seconds. On the average, sex is initiated about once every ninety minutes, even between members of the extended family. They copulate face to face, or front to back, and in any other way that is gymnastically possible. They masturbate themselves and each other and have oral sex. For more about this, visit http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html.
Despite the absence of stable mate bonds, bonobos share with us an extended sexual receptivity. In most animal species, females are in oestrus and ready for sexual intercourse for just a few days per year. Bonobo females are ready for sex during 50% of their entire adult life. Their extended receptivity, and by a larger number of females at the same time, reduces male competitiveness because one male cannot simultaneously guard half the group's adult females. Since bonobo females mate with every male there is no harem for the males to compete over–and no infanticide. As a new alpha male takes over the group, there is no infanticide because the new alpha is as likely to be the father of the group's infants as is any other male in the community. He cannot kill his own children. This would violate the procreation principle of evolution.
Bonobos are sensitive, lively, gentle, nervous, and are rarely violent. Chimpanzees are coarse, hot tempered, and are often violent. They also want to be more independent, while bonobos want to sit together and coordinate activities. De Waal explains that chimpanzees “resolve sexual issues with power" in that the alpha is the only male to have sex. In contrast, bonobos "resolve power issues with sex" in that the use of sex in every aspect of society has drastically reduced aggressive conflicts. Do you see anything familiar in your own society to that of either the chimpanzees or the bonobos? Visit www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/l_073_03.html for a video comparison of bonobos and chimpanzees. It explains the affects of food-packet size on the social behavior of the two types.
Frans De Waal also describes Karen Strier's studies of the muriquis monkeys in Brazil. For video clips, visit www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Brachyteles_arachnoides/more_moving_images.html. They are an endangered species of about five hundred individuals and are proving to be the most gentle of all primates. During 1,200 hours of observation, only nine aggressive chases were seen. There is no fighting over food because it is so abundant. There is an egalitarian relation between the sexes. Males do not fight physically over females because a female will have sex with each male in turn. Each male begins by attempting to remove the previous male's sperm from the female. The testicles of the males have become enlarged through time in their attempt to deliver the largest amount of sperm to the female because the male who supplies the most sperm will likely be the one who impregnates her with his offspring. For this species, nature has reduced physical aggression and replaced it with a contest of sperm quantities. Males do not fight. Instead they spend much time together, often embracing in a group.
What do these primate social systems tell us about ourselves?
Primates have an innate urge to form social systems: we humans cannot live without social interaction. While every primate social system contains much in common, different aspects are emphasized by each species. Experiments have found flexibility in the social system form taken by each particular species; it is not solely determined by genetics. The experiments involved moving an infant from its natural social system and placing it into that of another species. The studies found that the infant's social characteristics moved toward those of the new species after they had been placed with them. For example, scientists mixed some two-year-old rhesus, see www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Macaca_mulatta/more_moving_images.html, monkeys within a larger group of 2.5-year-old stump-tailed macaque monkeys. The rhesus monkeys have a more-strict dominance hierarchy and so have a lower rate of reconciliation (making-up) after fighting than do the macaques. When they were first placed together, the smaller group of rhesus expected the macaques to act like them but within a few months the rhesus monkeys had acquired the new rules and were reconciling at the same rate as the macaques. We too act differently in different groups.
Our recent understandings of the social systems of other primates have given us profound insight into that of our own. These studies reveal the sorts of variables that can affect the social system of different species. This gives us some ideas of what things may have played determining roles in the formation of the social system of our early ancestors. These studies also help us to know the potential flexibility of our own society. The social systems of apes and monkeys share much in common but also show great flexibility in adapting to the environment of each species.
The most unique aspect of the human social system is our monogamous parenting relationship. Our nuclear family includes the full-time presence of the father. Both parents contribute in raising offspring. For all other ape species, child-rearing is done by females. The sole contribution by the males is to play with them occasionally and to protect them. Our monogamous parenting strategy makes for less male competition over females than seen in chimpanzees. We also saw that chimpanzee males bond but females don't, while bonobos do just the opposite. In humans, males do bond and become friends with other males, and females do bond and become friends with other females.
As was mentioned earlier, the African rift raised mountains and altered the regional climate. During this process, the eastern landscape slowly changed from forest to savanna. This rift separated Africa into wetter-western and drier-eastern climates. Changes in the environment always leads to changes in the species. The social system of our human ancestors adapted to make them better matched to the developing savanna environment. Before the rift developed in Africa, the region had more ape species than monkey species. The rift lead to the demise of most of the African apes so that today, just three types remain. But the rift also lead to the line of apes that would become human. The human line developed in the drying east.
Neither bonobos nor chimpanzees are well suited to a savanna environment. Bonobos have the most abundantly available food and this leaves them little to fight over–except for the careers of each mother's son. Bonobo society would likely change if they were forced to move onto savanna plains where food is less available. Savanna life would require greater travel distances to feed the same number of individuals, but apes are more subject to predation in these open areas. (Our own upright-walking may have developed as we were forced to travel between shrinking forest areas.) Bonobo males do not know who their children are and so are unlikely to be of much help protecting them in such a situation. How would their social system change to cope with these new needs? Would they form monogamous parenting relationships or would they find another solution?
Male chimpanzees compete for dominance, cooperate to hunt, engage in territorial defense together, and do not help to raise children. When they have to, chimpanzee females are able to forage on their own because food is available. Until their newborn children have aged, they avoid the rest of the chimpanzee pack and its threats of new-alpha infanticide. If these females suddenly had to move onto the savanna then they would need to be closer to the pack for the two activities of food collecting and predator protection. But this means that more children would be lost to new-alpha infanticide. How would their social system change to cope with these new needs?
Food is more widely scattered on the savanna than it is in the forest. We have ethnographic examples, such as the Nevada and Utah Paiute and the Western Shoshone, of large groups of people splitting into single families to search for widely-scattered food. (Visit http://historytogo.utah.gov/paiute.html for a description of those of us humans who are the Utah Paiute, and visit www.utemountainute.com for information about the Ute today.) What is the chance that we developed our monogamous parenting strategy as a food gathering technique on the drying East-African savanna?
Before our ancestors had to adapt to the developing savanna, was our social system anything like the bonobos or the chimps? Through the day, did we also switch from one food collecting group to another or had we already formed into bands of twenty to one-hundred related individuals? Females raising offspring without any help from males would have a much tougher time out on the plains. Increased male involvement is required. In our nuclear family, both males and females contribute in raising, feeding, and protecting children. We rarely have harems, and new leaders never practice infanticide.
Our big brains and slow maturation rate cause other differences between us and the other primates. For big-brained humans, pregnancy lasts as long as possible so that the baby's brain can develop as much as possible. The female pelvic area has changed such that the baby can be born with its brain as fully developed and as large as possible. However, this big-brained baby cannot be so large that it will harm its mother during birth. A nine-month pregnancy results in the best balance between these two requirements. No other animal has as much difficulty during childbirth as do we humans. Our babies emerge as late as possible but are still not fully developed.
Our babies are especially helpless while they are infants because their brains have not yet fully developed. We also have the most prolonged adolescence of any animal. If a male abandons his children, they are more likely to die. To stay with them, he needs to know that the infants are his own children. Because of our especially helpless children, it is beneficial to form nuclear families with monogamous parenting relations rather than having the more typical mammalian parenting system. An infant on the open savanna is more likely to survive when both parents nurture and care for it. We saw in Chapter 7 that only about 5% of mammal species form monogamous parenting relations. (Ethnographic studies have found that modern humans are not strictly monogamous in that some higher socially ranking persons might have multiple spouses.)
In Chapter 7 we also saw that most animal species copulate only a few times per year while humans do this a number of times each week, even though just a few children are produced in a lifetime. Few other animals have sexual intercourse as frequently as do we humans. This increased frequency of sexual intercourse between monogamous spouses must have resulted in an increased number of successfully raised children and it had to be advantageous for not one but both parents. Natural selection means being well-matched to your environment of predators, climate, and food so that you will live long enough to have children, and this is just as important for males as it is for females. Human sexuality produces both pleasure and love. Not only does it produce children, it also bonds mates. The lifelong, child-raising bond between husband and wife is sustained in part through sexual intercourse. The nuclear family, consisting of children and two parents, forms the basis of our world.
Matrilineages, patrilineages, and cross-cousin marriages
Anthropologists have lived with thousands of peoples, from gatherer-hunters to fishers to city-dwellers, all around the world and have recorded the ways of those peoples. Anthropologists refer to a people’s way of life as their “culture.” Culture consists of a people’s instructions on how to do everything in life and is taught to each generation of children. Each human is nearly identical genetically in that we share the same inherited genetic predispositions. For example, each of us feels an innate urge to form a primate social system and to acquire culture. From one person to another, and from one group to another, we differ only in the details of our personalties and culture. A person’s personality is partly genetic and much influenced by the sum of life experiences. The culture of a group of people is a sort of personality of that group of people as a whole. (Each nation and each corporation also have a personality.) There is much variation in the details of the societies and cultures of the peoples of the earth. Here are a few samples of this variation.
Many peoples form matrilineages, with dominance shifting between families. Each family tries to improve its status relative to the others. Marriages are arranged to insure that the line is preserved and that its position is improved relative to all others. (When Westerners hear of arranged marriages, they think that it makes no sense at all, but the "sense" is in the benefit to the families and to the lines.) Often it is only the first marriage that is arranged. When a divorce occurs, the two persons involved will often choose their next spouse for themselves. This is the way of the Kipsigis people who live in villages in the African savanna-woodlands and are farmers and cattle ranchers. Cattle, land, and cash are major preoccupations of their men. Parents arrange marriages and pay a bride-price in cattle.
Many peoples have adopted the system of cross-cousin marriage. In this system, a son marries the mother's brother's daughter. Of the resulting children, males marry the mother's brother's daughters while females marry the wife's brother's son, see www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/marriage/xcuz.html. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement that keeps generating spouses and children for both lineages. The Yanomamo, see www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/axfight/movie4.html, people are patrilineal and polygamous, with men dominating women. They practice cross-cousin marriage but bend the rules of classification of would-be spouses whenever they need to do so. Marriage is an inter-lineage institution, not just something between individuals. Often marriage partners are not exclusive mating partners; in fact, many children are not produced by spouses.
Human men seek the society's items of wealth so that they can obtain wives. For humans, social status is another form of wealth. Human men compete with wealth rather than physical combat. For many human societies, arranged marriages and cross-cousin marriage systems have replaced combat.
The extent of the relationship between related individuals varies from culture to culture, and each child learns these relationships. For example, the relationship between daughter and mother-in-law varies from there being very little interaction between the two persons to there being a near ownership of the daughter by the mother-in-law. Another example is that English people today use the word "uncle" to represent either the mother's brother or the father's brother; both types of uncles have similar relationships with the children of their brothers and sisters. The pastoral, patrilineal Nuer people believe the father's brother has rights and obligations while the mother's brother has little. The Matrilineal Trobrianders do just the opposite.
Our use of language forms a large part of what it is that makes us human. Scientists from a wide range of fields have gathered clues about the origin of our language and the way in which we acquire language as children. As infants, we learn language by carefully watching the things our family and group members are doing as they are speaking. We are tuned to the many contextual and gestural clues that accompany their words. When infants first hear spoken words, they are meaningless, funny sounds. We soon recognize that these sounds are broken into a series of individual packets, including letter-sounds, syllables, and words. Sounds are classified into vowels and consonants. Words are formed through a series of shifts between consonants and vowels. Humans produce both of these types of sounds while most animals produce only one type–for example, chimpanzees produce only vowels.
Human speech is produced by puffing air through our throat, nose, and mouth while placing our tongue and lips in various positions and shapes. We make quit a variety of sounds, from plugged-nose throat rumbles to the clack made by first sucking our tongue to the roof of our mouth and then pulling it away. Each group of persons has a language composed of a subset of the available range of human-producible sounds. The sounds used in the language of the Bushmen of South Africa includes that upper-roof clack while the language of many Pacific Islanders consists mostly of vowels and few consonants. We also communicate different word meanings by varying our tone as we produce a single sound. For example, low, medium, high, rising, and falling tones are used in Thai to give five different meanings to a single syllable. My friend Dat says for example that in Vietnamese, the word “da” has one spelling but means four different things–ice, to kick, skin, or the past tense of to do–depending on the spoken accent.
The next time you hear a foreign language being spoken, pay attention to the rate at which these sounds are produced by one person and comprehended by another. Listen to the sounds being used in that language. Are there any that are not being used in your own language? The set of sounds used to speak English is very similar to the set used to speak Lettish, which is the language of Latvia.
While infants, our ears are especially tuned to the nuances of spoken words. Adult ears are less discerning and so have trouble distinguishing and producing the sounds of a new language they are trying to learn, resulting in funny accents. A much smaller version of this same sort of thing occurs when you first hear several songs from a new type of music: they all sound the same until you learn to better distinguish one song from the next.
Infants notice that every time people separate they also utter a certain sound or series of sounds. English speaking people say “bye.” Every time a person receives an item or action from another person, he or she acknowledges it by uttering “thanks.” Notice that the particular sound does not matter: it could just as well be the sound made when you pull your sucked-in cheeks away from your teeth. The child notices that the event and the spoken sounds go hand in hand: the two always accompany each other. He or she equates the event and the spoken sounds. We learn to speak by watching what is happening while sounds are being produced. We look for correlations between actions and words or between words and items, such as “ball.” A growing child soon notices a few hundred such correlations. Our brains are made to do this. An adult having a 10,000-word vocabulary has noticed 10,000 such correlations. As adults speak, they will say the same word that they’ve heard others say in the same situation or to communicate the same emotion. For example, you may have noticed the distinction in situations in which people use the word “elated” rather than “happy” or “jubilant.” We use words to communicate states to others who have experienced those same states. We agree on the words used to express those states. (Can adults learn a foreign language by noticing the correlations between actions and spoken words, rather than by merely memorizing equivalent translations back to their first language? Is this the reason its best to learn a foreign language by moving to that foreign country and immersing yourself in it?) A child is soon able to communicate thoughts such as “reality is only a dream.”
To make some sounds, a person must coordinate the movement of as many as seventy-five different muscles. A child’s first sounds are indistinct, but they are soon clearly enunciated. Three-year-olds are seen to struggle with the muscle movements of lips and tongue necessary to produce each sound. During the first years of our life, we spend hundreds of hours practicing until we can speak effortlessly–no longer remembering how difficult it had been at first. Adults are no longer aware that they have consciously produced those seventy-five muscle movements; they take the production of speech for granted in the same way they take breathing for granted. Visit www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/peat.qt and www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/elgar.qt to see the way you move your tongue when speaking. Did you know you were doing that? Without seeing your speech-producing muscles, you learned how to move those muscles such that the previously agreed upon sounds of English, Farsi, or Swahili were made.
Notice that it similarly required hundreds of hours of practice to become proficient at most every other complex task you have mastered, including walking, dancing, catching, throwing, playing a board game, skiing, driving a car, performing arithmetic, managing your home, getting along with others, gauging the intent of others, raising children, and performing our own occupation. (Scientists measure the increase in neuronal connections that form as we repeatedly practice a new task.) Can you estimate how many hours you spent learning each of these chores? We are more naturally prepared for certain tasks, but one’s skill improves through time and with each attempt no matter the chore. To see the way in which you control the movement of your foot and leg bones while walking, watch Steve Collins and Andy Ruina’s robot walk at
In Primate behavior, Quiatt and Reynolds point out that our word-language is highly instilled because we have developed a hardwired circuit, our "inner-voice," that instantly and automatically produces the word to accompany the sight of every object–whether we want it to or not. (Our "inner-voice" is not the seat of our consciousness, or even an indication for our unique consciousness, it is simply a circuit that we cannot turn off.) Persons who are deaf at birth and learn sign language during childhood develop an inner-signer rather than an inner-voice.
The fact that we can equally well develop an inner-voice or an inner-signer provides a particularly revealing example of how our brains have only general abilities for tasks–not specific forms. We have an innate predisposition to learn and to use complex language but the exact form of that language is not preset within our genetic makeup. Our innate language ability enables us to learn to speak Farsi or to sign Italian. (We will similarly see that we have an innate predisposition to form complex culture, but the details of that culture are not genetically predetermined.) It has also been found that if, during childhood, we are not surrounded by other people and so do not have the opportunity to learn language by the age of ten or so, then we will never learn language. This is known because there have been a few cases of children who were discovered after having lived in isolation for most of their life. You might like to read Savage Girls and Wild Boys, A history of Feral Children by Michael Newton.
There are many languages around the world but only a small number of grammatical systems. (Visit www.ethnologue.com for information about today’s 7,000 languages. A list of the languages spoken in each nation is available at www.unesco.org/culture/worldreport/html_eng/stat2/table6.pdf.) Our systems of grammar differ, for example, in the order in which words are spoken; some peoples say "big tree" while others say "tree big." The grammar of all peoples, whether gatherer-hunter or big-city dweller, has been found to be equally complex.
Linguists have found that there are a handful of languages that have spread out to cover large regions of the globe. This has been deduced by comparing basic words from each existing language. It is seen that our most fundamental words, such as “hand” or “mother,” change very slowly. Indo-European is the ancient language that was the precursor to the current languages of both India and Europe. In India today, the word for “father” is “pater.” There are many basic, slowly-changing words in India and Europe that are related by interchanging the characters 'p' and 'f' in these two languages. Some linguists hope to deduce a collection of words from the first language spoken by humans. For more information about modern languages derived from Indo-European, visit http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/History_of_English.htm and www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/PIE.html.
The migrations of people have carried languages around the planet and mixed them together. Migrations begin when the local population becomes too great, as occurs, for example, during the introduction or sudden improvement of farming. There are some languages, like that of the Basque people in Spain, that may not be derived from any of the languages known to have spread across regions of the planet. It may be that the Basque people have been in Spain for tens of thousands of years: they may be the direct descendants, and so is their language, of the prehistoric peoples who made cave paintings in that region. For more information about the Basque, visit www.allempires.com/empires/basque/basque.htm.
The bonobo chimpanzee Kanzi, who will be further-described below, has a language capacity that is similar to a human child. Kanzi understands a few hundred spoken words and understands that the meaning of words depends on the order in which they are spoken. In Apes, Men, and Language Eugene Linden describes how the chimpanzee Washoe learned sign language, and that the first time Washoe was given a radish she described its taste as "cry-hurt-fruit"–just as many of us would do. The language abilities of these world-famous chimpanzees may indicate that our human ability is not unique but is simply an enhancement of a previously-existing mental ability of animals to communicate. Even our pets understand a few spoken words.
Our ability to make spoken words is due to the changes in our anatomy involving the lowered position of our larynx. In our biological past, we became able to speak at the same time that the physical anatomy for speech developed. Scientists examine the size of the cavity produced by the Wernicle’s area in fossil skulls to get clues about the time at which this occurred. We also know that a human loses the ability to speak if the Broca or Wernicle areas of the brain (see www.tbts.org/assets/images/brainmap.gif) become damaged.
In the same way that the human ability for communication is an enhancement of previously-existing animal ability, I imagine that our self-awareness and consciousness levels are simply more enhanced than that of other animals. Consciousness is studied by many different scientific disciplines. There are thousands of books containing debates over questions like the following. Can you make a machine think? If you build a machine that senses its external environment and reacts to it, is it conscious? Are we nothing more than a machine that senses its environment and reacts to it? Is it our thoughts that make us more than a machine? Is there consciousness in each animal that has a lump of neurons? Visit http://suhep.phy.syr.edu/courses/modules/MM for more information.
The study of the language abilities of apes gives important clues about our own past language abilities. For example, visit www.koko.org. Some of these ape species may be extinct in a few decades. If these closely related apes had become extinct before these studies were made then these clues could not have been obtained in any other way. Instead of seeing another animal that is an ape very similar to ourselves, we would have been left trying to figure out why we are so different from giraffes and such.
Scientific studies of language ability in apes
The next few pages contain a summary of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin's Kanzi, the Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind. Sue and Roger explain that the central question for their research is the nature of the human mind. How did it arise, and how does its own construction affect itself? Is there continuity between our minds and those of other species, or is there a sharp break between our minds and theirs? These ape studies give us insight into the essence of our own humanity.
Sue's research team spends many hours per day with the bonobos–including those named Kanzi, Mutata, and Panbanisha–who live at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, see www.iowagreatapes.org. The lab website includes video clips showing that Kanzi understands spoken English and makes tools and that Panbanisha writes lexigram symbols. You can take a virtual tour of the lab and read about the researchers. There are descriptions and videos of prosimians, monkeys, bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans and there is information about conservation.
Team members come to know the individual personalities of these apes as thoroughly as we come to know those of our good friends. The researchers see that Kanzi thinks about his actions and listens to the things people are saying about him. Kanzi and the other apes like to watch action shows on TV and pay close attention to themes of danger and of danger resolved. Austin and Sherman are two bonobos who Sue worked with at other labs. Austin likes to watch water being poured (in Chapter 2 we mentioned that this was a characteristic of a natural-born scientist).Both Sherman and Austin learned to use a joystick to play video games after seeing Sue do it just a few times. Those apes who are exposed to language while they are infants will easily learn to use a joystick while apes who were not require much more instruction before they can do this. Sue found that the apes she has raised from birth within a language-rich environment act more attentively and are more reflective than are other apes. This tells us something about the effects of learning language on the organization of an infant's developing brain. (Visit www.newhorizons.org/neuro/hhmi.htm for a discussion of the plasticity of the learning brain.) Sherman and Austin would pretend they were eating and sharing imaginary food. They would pretend to use strings to pull imaginary toys. Sherman and Austin would remind Sue of a promise she had made to them the day before, and they would correctly answer when she asked where they had left a toy yesterday. These actions indicate a sense of time, including past, present, and future.
An ape learns to recognize and to distinguish brightly colored shapes if it is repeatedly shown these shapes while it is an infant; adult apes will not learn to do this. Just as we humans are able to learn to talk only if taught as infants, apes learn to understand the words of our spoken language only if continually exposed to human speech as infants. Adult apes who have never heard human speech, perceive it to be nothing but noise. Sue says that the developmental period of an ape is as profound and plastic as is that of our own.
Kanzi learned to understand spoken language in the same way that a human does: while Kanzi was an infant, he listened to adults talk and watched to see what they were doing as they were talking. Kanzi learned to recognize a few hundred words of human spoken language. Sue found that as Kanzi was learning language, it helped to make facial expression to also communicate the meaning of her sentences (communicating with facial expressions is certainly older than communicating with spoken words).
We assume when a child uses a word it also knows what it means. However, when an ape uses a word many of us are skeptical and do not believe it understands the meaning of the words it is using. Some of us skeptics think of very complicated explanations for an animal's behavior rather than more-simply concluding that the animal is acting in the same way a human would do under the same circumstance. This is in opposition to the trusted principle of Occam's razor. (When my niece April was young she once used a pencil to make some marks on a paper and asked "Does it say something?" While we were undergraduates, my friend Hamid was once working on some mathematics when he turned and said "Look, its turning into something." I was not as skeptical of April and Hamid as were Sue's colleagues about the abilities of apes.)
For many years, skeptics dismissed the ape's apparent comprehension as mere imitation. Sue was even more critical of her own conclusions than were her skeptics. She extensively describes her own doubts and the facts which eventually convinced her it that the apes were doing more than just imitating people. For example, when two humans talk to each other we communicate not just with our spoken words but with many other signals. When skeptics see an ape do the same while communicating with another ape, or with one of the skeptics, this often convinces that skeptic that the ape really understands both sides of the conversation. We can distinguish a conversation between our self and another intelligent being from a one-sided conversation between our self and a mechanical machine that is merely imitating a two-way conversation.
Sue studied the acquisition of language by the chimpanzees, Sherman and Austin. She wanted to find out if she could tell them something that they did not already know. Sue's team uses colored symbols and shapes to represent words. These lexigrams are displayed on a large board and are moved around after each use so that it is known that the apes are looking for the right lexigram rather than a certain position on the board. A portion of the board can be seen at www.greatapetrust.org/images/language/lex01.jpg. To teach the chimps that a lexigram represents a specific object–a banana, for example–they will initially be given a banana while pointing to its lexigram. This is done repeatedly throughout a period of time while continually reducing the amount of banana given until the chimps no longer expect to receive bananas when they point to its lexigram. Sherman and Austin learned many lexigrams this way, and they knew the difference between naming an item and asking to eat one. By the way, Sue and her colleagues also used these colored symbols to communicate with their own infants long before they were able to speak, and many parents are beginning to use sign language to communicate with their one-year-old infants about their basic needs.
Sue's team would ask Sherman or Austin to do something with a specified object that was in a container of many items. If the team accidentally named an item that was not in the container the apes would let them know. Next, the team showed one ape what was in the container. This ape had to tell the other so that they would both be given some food to eat. Each ape understood that the other already knew what was in the container. They learned to share food this way. When only one could eat, he showed that he felt guilty for eating while the other could not.
Next, Sherman and Austin were placed in adjoining rooms separated by a window. Each could see which lexigram the other was pressing. They enjoyed lexigramming so much that they did it even when nobody asked them to and would tell the other about their intentions just before they went and did something. When new foods and new lexigrams were introduced, Sherman and Austin would agree on which lexigram to use to represent each new item.
In one set of experiments, Sherman's room was full of tools while Austin's contained food. Both got to eat when informing the other of something and then requesting something in return: they were cooperating. For example, the team would let Sherman see which object they had placed into a container and then give food to both chimps if he could tell Austin which object was in the container. The team might ask one chimp to request that the other bring a specified object or exchange one object for another. Their language competence first emerged when it became required for them to use it to obtain and share food. Sue wonders if our ancestor's ability for social communication enabled an increase in social food-getting.
Sherman sometimes confused key and syringe, which are both inserted, while Austin sometimes confused wrench and key, which are both turned. This makes Sue wonder if they are more often thinking in terms of verbs, while we are more often thinking in terms of nouns. For example, Sherman once accidentally asked for a key when he meant to ask for a wrench. When Austin handed him the mistakenly-requested key, Sherman looked at his own board and realized his mistake because the lexigram for "key" was lit up. Sherman then looked at Austin while tapping the wrench lexigram; this made Austin understood the mistake so that he then handed Sherman the wrench.
Next the scientists turned off the keyboard of one chimp and then let him watch the team place peanut-butter into a container. Instead of the keyboard, the team left many different labels from many different product containers in the room. Right away this chimp held up the peanut-butter jar label for the other to see, making up for the lack of the keyboard by instead using the label. The other chimp figured out what was meant and hit the peanut-butter lexigram on his own keyboard. The chimps demonstrated that they knew and recognized thirty different labels. Nobody had ever taught them that they could use manufacturer labels for communication.
Next they tested the ability of the chimps to categorize items as "food" or "tools." For example, Sherman would use a general lexigram for "glass" but never for his favorite glass. He instead used an unusual symbol that he had assigned to represent that favorite glass. Sherman and Austin could sort photos into people, animals, tools, food, and vehicles.
Just a few decades ago, bonobo chimpanzees were first discovered in the African forest. Bonobo chimpanzees are more adept at certain communication tasks than are the common chimpanzees. We saw above that, in the wild, bonobos live in thicker forest areas and have to use more vocal means of communication while the common chimpanzees communicate more visually. This may make bonobos more communicatively creative in general. Adult bonobos recognize human facial and body expressions but chimpanzees do not unless they have been raised by humans. Bonobos found ten different uses for their pail while chimpanzees used it only to make loud displays. Bonobos use hand-signals during communication–and during copulation, too. A bonobo will drag a branch on the ground to tell its group members that they should move in the indicated direction.
Sue and her team were trying to teach an adult bonobo, named Matata, to use lexigrams but were not being very successful. Matata's adopted infant son Kanzi was with her during these lessons and one day astounded Sue's team by just up and using the lexigrams. For example, he signed "give apple" and then went to the fridge to select an apple. Sue and her team accidentally discovered that apes learn to communicate in the same way as do human children–in a social context through interaction and expectation. We learn that words refer to things, events, and feelings. We learn the meaning of words when we see others react to it in a cause and effect way. We gain additional clues from gestures, glances, tones, knowledge of similar situations, facial expressions, lip and eye expressions, and actions. (My friend Mike says he reads people's meaning by looking at their eyes, while I listen to their tone.) Your child's one-word utterances are made to convey much more because of his or her gestures. Kanzi learned language socially, by listening and watching–just as we do it. This shows that our brain is not altogether different from Kanzi’s in understanding language and in communication. Sue then understood that Matata was simply too old to learn easily to communicate–just as humans can learn language only while being infants. Sue thought she had been pretty silly in her earlier research, trying to choose daily words for her apes to learn. As if we choose which words to teach to our own children and in which order.
Kanzi’s thinking was revealed in his daily actions. When Kanzi wanted to be carried in a certain direction, he would either point with his arms or turn Sue's head in that direction. To get an out-of-reach object, he would point to a person and then to that object. To ask for a jar to be opened, he would point to the jar with one hand and then make a spinning motion with his other hand. He would point at a nut with one hand and then make a hammering motion with this other hand. Kanzi would mention that it is raining outside and he once accurately described the hair of a visitor as a mushroom. Right after Mary Ann joined Sue's team of researchers, she took Kanzi for a walk and he tricked her into taking her to places in the forest where he had never before been allowed. He knew these places were off limits and knew also that Mary Ann did not know this.
Kanzi’s actions show his capacities to understand self, other, and sympathy. Kanzi once tried to take advantage of Sue's sympathy to get her to force his mother to let him nurse. We have seen that acts of sympathy happen only if an individual understands the pain of another. This means that you are "putting yourself in their place." This ability is an important requirement for animals to have social groups. The group's bond will increase as this ability increases. Kanzi would use the keyboard to form multi-word sentences. For example, he would tell one person to tickle another. The fact that he came up with this use for his keyboard without anyone showing it to him indicates that he has a real sense of self and of "other." Kanzi's language ability also indicates that he knows the difference between his state of mind and that of another individual. Why would he tell us something unless he thought we didn't already know it? We speak because we know that the knowledge state of the speaker and the listener are different.
Kanzi understands spoken works and is not limited to being told things through the keyboard. Sue now understands that this was made possible because Kanzi had been surrounded by humans and was listening to them speaking words since the day he was born. His developing brain learned to listen and to distinguish the individual sounds of our spoken words. To understand spoken words, the bonobo chimpanzee Kanzi does not have to look at the speaker's facial expressions as did the common chimpanzees. In fact, Sue can cover her head while she speaks and Kanzi still understands what she is saying to him. This can be seen in videos at http://www.greatapetrust.org/media/avclips.php.
Kanzi also listens in on conversations between other persons. Kanzi once communicated to a non-lexigramming ape to return Sue's keys. If one person asks another "Did you leave the lights on last night?" Kanzi will look at the light switch. The team found that they would have to spell-out the words they didn't want Kanzi to hear. This made Kanzi listen more-closely because he recognized this to be an attempt to conceal something from him–just as our children do.
The research team often used video recorders. Sherman and Austin always knew instantly whether they were seeing themselves live on a TV monitor or whether it was a recording that was being played back. They would simply stick out their tongue to see if their TV image would do the same. (My friend Paul laughs about walking past a darkened home and seeing a person in its window; he says he had to flap his arms to find out that it was his own reflection.) If they found that the image was a recording then they paid it little attention but would react in many ways to live cameras. Austin would take the live camera and point it down his throat to see what it looked like in there; he would even get a flashlight to help illuminate his wonder. Sherman always tried to look tough whenever he saw his own, live image. Kanzi used the live camera to observe his attempts to blowup balloons and to blow bubbles with bubble gum. Panbanisha admired her own image. When Sue placed the live monitor in front of a group of impaired students, she found that show-offs would stick out their tongue and that shy persons would look away. We saw above that individuals from every ape species know when they are seeing their own image in a mirror but monkeys do not. Sue found that monkeys would understand when the television image told them another individual was behind them but they never reacted as if they understood they were seeing their own lone image.
In seventeen months Kanzi learned 150 different, spoken words. If you carefully choose 150 words, including big, small, red, blue, green, near, far, hello, and goodbye, along with the names of a few objects and the numbers one through ten then you will be able to communicate everyday needs with another person. Kanzi always uses the English ordering of words, for example he would put the verb in front of the noun while communicating the idea "hide ball." If you asked Kanzi to throw a potato at the turtle he always understood the order of the words and never mistakenly threw the turtle at the potato. Did we invent syntax or is it somehow part of our brain's wiring? Would another ape invent the same syntax?
Kanzi understood sentences as complicated as "Kanzi, if you give Austin your monster-mask, I'll let you have some of his cereal." Sue would ask Kanzi to hand her a particular photo out of a set of thirty-five photos of different things. In 180 trials, Kanzi selected the right picture 95% of the time when asked with lexigrams and 93% of the time when asked in English. Kanzi was tested 660 times in seven months with complicated sentences, like "Get the ball that's in the group room," or "pour the milk on the cereal." Kanzi often forgot one of two items when asked something like, "Give Sue the hat and the potato." Lieberman postulated that in our biological past, our auditory ability to distinguish the sounds of spoken words would develop in step with the ability of our vocal tracts to make sounds, but Kanzi has shown a high ability to listen to spoken sounds even though he can't speak them.
Sue explains that many animals can make vowel but not consonant sounds. Our uniquely bent throat–due to our upright stance–allows us to block nose air and instead send it through our mouth in sudden bursts. (Our bent throat also makes us susceptible to choking.) To form words, we separate vowel sounds with consonant sounds. These consonant sounds could not have been made by our australopithecine ancestors but only by our fully upright hominid ancestors. Sue explains that it is likely that at this point in our past we simply invented language; it may not be a direct result of our brain's wiring. We continue to teach it to each new generation. Brain studies with infants have shown that object manipulation and language are located in the same regions of the brain until the age of two.
Nick Toth is an expert at making stone tools. He constructs them using the technics of our ancestors, using one rock to strike the top of another one. When striking in just the right way, he produces knife flakes from the bottom of the target rock as he hits its top. This is similar to the way in which bb-bullets form conically-shaped holes when they strike a window. A novice doesn't have much luck at just picking up a rock and making a stone tool because it is counterintuitive that flakes emerge from the bottom of the target rock.
In just two months, Nick taught Kanzi to strike rocks together to make flakes. Kanzi's lack of an opposable thumb makes these things more difficult for him than for Nick. After eighteen months of practice, neither Kanzi nor Sue could make rocks of as high a quality as are the ancient samples found in archaeological sites. Since Kanzi can make stone tools, why did Homo Habilis need twice the brain size as has Kanzi? Maybe it took a larger brain to know that the tool would be useful at a later moment. We have to come across the right type of rock to make these stone tools, and then we have to carry them with us for later use. Our Homo erectus ancestors were able to make Acheulean tools with just fifteen minutes of effort. They had an end result in mind as they were working, just as you have while doing a task. You may have seen your pet performing some activity that showed he or she had a specific, end result in mind. (Comparing the mental state of our ancestors–and of our pets, too–with our own during similar activities, allows us to have a tiny glimpse into their minds and abilities.)
Mammalian youngsters learn how to do each of life’s tasks by watching their parents do them. No spoken language is used while teaching and learning these things. The language abilities increased for our australopithecine through homo ancestors. Kanzi knows hundreds of words but learned to make stone tools mostly by just watching Nick. Which of our ancestors was the first to have names (nouns) for every plant and animal in its surroundings? As we have more things to name, our language ability will be expanding. What is the number of different nouns and verbs needed to teach children the techniques of gathering and hunting? How many are needed by the Amahuaca hunter, whose techniques were described above, to teach children how to wait near a fawn’s nesting place? How many are needed to teach children the techniques of home-building and of food preparation? Was the cultural fluorescence of Homo sapiens enabled or accompanied by the expansion of language to include thousands of words spoken with a sufficient grammar? (Pinker points out that the human brain likely changed a bit during this same time.) Just by watching others, by age fifteen or so, could we learn to perform all the techniques of daily life, including things as complicated as home building, weaving, and farming? We humans still have our innate, animal capacity to learn by watching. In fact, many of the things we learn, we learn most easily by simply watching. Of the several thousand things your parents taught you about your culture, from using spoons to operating vending machines and mail boxes (don’t forget to pull the flap down a second time to check that the mail disappeared), which could not have been learned without language? Our human teachers verbally expound on the details of techniques–in fact, you can not stop them from doing so–but just how much could we learn without any verbal discussion? At what point in our past cultural development, did language become necessary for further cultural expansion? Could we humans have crossed the ocean to inhabit Australia without having the use of language? No genetic mutation had to occur for us to begin farming, invent our city life, develop civilization, and fly to the moon; these things were done using our gatherer-hunter mind. But without language we cannot make plans for the community or discuss kinship structures or cause and effect relationships, such as the relation between sex, pregnancy, and birth. What is the main use of our language? Researchers find that two-thirds of our time is spent talking about other people. What is the number of words needed to describe the actions, interactions, and emotional states of people?
Can an animal reflect upon its actions without language? We have trouble imagining how we used to live without language. How does your one-year-old do it? Do you see your one-year-old in deep thought? Did such reflection begin only with language? Thought and the mental manipulation of the world take place without language. A lion could not plan the steps for its attack without mental manipulation of the world. Dancing, sculpting, music making, and athletics each require mental manipulation of the world without any language at all. In fact, many persons believe that words get in the way of these activities: in the lab, we measure this distraction as neuronal activity.
If we do these things using mental manipulation of the world without language then it may be that other animals can do the same. Language enhances thought processes but it is surely just an extension of existing facilities. Apes are seen not to merely react but to think also. Would a dog say that we can't hear or smell? Would a bat say that we can't see because we cannot echo-locate? Sue explains that to fail to try
