Do West African Chimpanzees Have a Culture With Rituals?

Chimp stone throwing compilation from laura kehoe on Vimeo.

Chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing

Authors:

Kühl et al

Abstract:

The study of the archaeological remains of fossil hominins must rely on reconstructions to elucidate the behaviour that may have resulted in particular stone tools and their accumulation. Comparatively, stone tool use among living primates has illuminated behaviours that are also amenable to archaeological examination, permitting direct observations of the behaviour leading to artefacts and their assemblages to be incorporated. Here, we describe newly discovered stone tool-use behaviour and stone accumulation sites in wild chimpanzees reminiscent of human cairns. In addition to data from 17 mid- to long-term chimpanzee research sites, we sampled a further 34 Pan troglodytes communities. We found four populations in West Africa where chimpanzees habitually bang and throw rocks against trees, or toss them into tree cavities, resulting in conspicuous stone accumulations at these sites. This represents the first record of repeated observations of individual chimpanzees exhibiting stone tool use for a purpose other than extractive foraging at what appear to be targeted trees. The ritualized behavioural display and collection of artefacts at particular locations observed in chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing may have implications for the inferences that can be drawn from archaeological stone assemblages and the origins of ritual sites.

Pop sci write up at Scientific American by one of the researchers.

Chimps are REALLY Tongue Tied, Unable to Learn Other Groups' Languages

Research published earlier this year claiming chimpanzees can learn each others' language is not supported, a team of scientists concludes after reviewing the study.

The scholarship in question, published in the journal Current Biology in February, centered on the examination of two sets of chimpanzees in the Edinburgh Zoo: one that had been captive for several years in the facility and one that had recently arrived from the Beekse Bergen Safari Park in the Netherlands. Over a three-year period, the researchers claimed that the latter set had altered their sounds to those of the former set when communicating about a common object, apples, resulting in what they saw as a newly shared vocalization.

The original study team, which included faculty from the University of York, the University of Zurich, and the University of St. Andrews, posited that the findings "provide the first evidence for vocal learning in a referential call in non-humans." This was offered as evidence that chimpanzees can learn different calls for the same object, which was widely interpreted as an important finding for the study of language evolution.

But a review of the Current Biology study by researchers at the German Primate Center in Göttingen, the University of Kent, and New York University, suggests these conclusions are off-base.

link.

Neandertals Liked to Collect Flowers in Iraq

Marta Fiacconi and Chris Hunt have undertaken an analysis of pollen samples from the surface of the sediments of Shanidar Cave, Iraq.

Shanidar is one of the most important Neandertal sites known in West Asia, with the partial skeletons of nine Mousterian individuals. The excavator, Ralph Solecki, and Arlette Leroi-Gourhan claimed that flowers may have been deposited deliberately with one of the Neandertal bodies, Shanidar IV. The evidence was unusual concentrations of pollen within the sediment surrounding the skeleton.a

link.

Homo naledi: a new Member of the Homo Genus who Buried its Dead

An international research team, which includes NYU anthropologists Scott Williams and Myra Laird, has discovered a new species of a human relative. Homo naledi, uncovered in a cave outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, sheds light on the diversity of our genus and possibly its origin.

"This discovery is unprecedented in the sheer number of hominins collected from such a small area in the virtual absence of other animal remains," says Williams, an assistant professor in NYU's Department of Anthropology. "That makes this site unique. Moreover, the announcement describes only the tip of the iceberg of analyses that will come, and we hope that is also true of the cave itself and the material that it still holds."

The team's findings, which are published in two papers in the journal eLife, were announced by South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society, and the South African National Research Foundation.

The discovery also indicates that H. naledi intentionally deposited bodies of its dead in a remote cave chamber--behaviors previously thought limited to humans.

link.

2nd link. 

3rd link.

open access paper link.

Age uncertain.  Could be as old as early Pleistocene (2.1MYA) or as young as late Pleistocene (100kya)

John Hawks is the second author.  When he puts up a post on it, I'll link, too.  Someone ought to give him a hard time and ask if this isn't a diseased Homo sapiens.

Wait! What?! Neandertals in Spain had a HEATED WATER? (????) Basin?!?!

The Neanderthals of the Abric Romaní (Capellades, Barcelona) site excavated a concave hole on the ground of 40x30x10 cm. It could be a container excavated with a digger stick with a finality of heat water. This hole is located near the wall of the rockshelter and is enclosed of a high quantity of hearths, limestones and speleothemes with thermical fractures. The discovery took place during this month’s excavation managed by the IPHES (Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social); it started on August 7th and finished on August 28th. This fieldwork supplied new 10 000 archaeological remains whose provide very important information about the domestic activities of Neanderthals.

link.

Do you Speak American?

Nearly a century ago, just after World War I had ended, there was a groundswell of linguistic patriotism in America. All of a sudden, scholars, writers and politicians were interested in studying, defining and promoting a distinctly "American" version of English.

In 1919, H.L. Mencken published the first edition of what would become one of his more popular books, The American Language. In the early 1920s, some of the country's leading linguists started work on the "Linguistic Atlas of New England", one of the first attempts to systematically document a regional dialect; in 1925, the journal American Speech published its first issue.

By 1922, Rep. Washington J. McCormick had introduced a bill to Congress proposing that the country's "national and official language" be "declared to be the American language." States followed suit, and while most of these bills failed, in 1923 Illinois actually did declare the state's official language to be "American."

But what is American, exactly? In every place that people speak English, whether it's Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Ghana, South Africa, or Canada, the language has its own essential character, sometimes so distinct that people from one place can hardly understand people from another. In this mish-mash of Germanic and Latinate forms, what distinguishes the language that's used in this country? How do you speak American?

link.

Neandertal Eagle Talon Jewelry Found From Pleistocene Quaternary Croatia

Evidence for Neandertal Jewelry: Modified White-Tailed Eagle Claws at Krapina

Authors:

Radovčić et al

Abstract:

We describe eight, mostly complete white-tailed eagle (Haliaëtus [Haliaeetus] albicilla) talons from the Krapina Neandertal site in present-day Croatia, dating to approximately 130 kyrs ago. Four talons bear multiple, edge-smoothed cut marks; eight show polishing facets and/or abrasion. Three of the largest talons have small notches at roughly the same place along the plantar surface, interrupting the proximal margin of the talon blade. These features suggest they were part of a jewelry assemblage, --- the manipulations a consequence of mounting the talons in a necklace or bracelet. An associated phalanx articulates with one of the talons and has numerous cut marks, some of which are smoothed. These white-tailed eagle bones, discovered more than 100 years ago, all derive from a single level at Krapina and represent more talons than found in the entire European Mousterian period. Presence of eight talons indicates that the Krapina Neandertals acquired and curated eagle talons for some kind of symbolic purpose. Some have argued that Neandertals lacked symbolic ability or copied this behavior from modern humans. These remains clearly show that the Krapina Neandertals made jewelry well before the appearance of modern humans in Europe, extending ornament production and symbolic activity early into the European Mousterian.

Carlos Bait: A comparison of worldwide phonemic and genetic variation in human populations

A comparison of worldwide phonemic and genetic variation in human populations

Authors:

Creanza et al

Abstract:

Worldwide patterns of genetic variation are driven by human demographic history. Here, we test whether this demographic history has left similar signatures on phonemes—sound units that distinguish meaning between words in languages—to those it has left on genes. We analyze, jointly and in parallel, phoneme inventories from 2,082 worldwide languages and microsatellite polymorphisms from 246 worldwide populations. On a global scale, both genetic distance and phonemic distance between populations are significantly correlated with geographic distance. Geographically close language pairs share significantly more phonemes than distant language pairs, whether or not the languages are closely related. The regional geographic axes of greatest phonemic differentiation correspond to axes of genetic differentiation, suggesting that there is a relationship between human dispersal and linguistic variation. However, the geographic distribution of phoneme inventory sizes does not follow the predictions of a serial founder effect during human expansion out of Africa. Furthermore, although geographically isolated populations lose genetic diversity via genetic drift, phonemes are not subject to drift in the same way: within a given geographic radius, languages that are relatively isolated exhibit more variance in number of phonemes than languages with many neighbors. This finding suggests that relatively isolated languages are more susceptible to phonemic change than languages with many neighbors. Within a language family, phoneme evolution along genetic, geographic, or cognate-based linguistic trees predicts similar ancestral phoneme states to those predicted from ancient sources. More genetic sampling could further elucidate the relative roles of vertical and horizontal transmission in phoneme evolution.

Chimpanzees can Learn 'Food Calls'

Chimpanzees living in captivity are capable of learning calls that refer to specific food items. This was shown by an evolutionary biologist from the University of Zurich together with English researchers. They now published a behavioral study suggesting, that great apes are capable of referring to objects and socially learn meaningful calls.

A special feature of human language is that objects and events are named with socially learned symbols or words. Non-human primates like chimpanzees are arguably capable of producing alarm and food calls,that refer to objects in their environment. However so far researchers assumed, that the acoustic structures of these calls are an expression of their excitement and cannot be controlled by the chimpanzees. Now Simon Townsend, Evolutionary biologist from the University of Zurich has shown together with his English colleagues, that also chimpanzees can learn calls that refer to specific objects.

link.

Chimps Teach Other Chimps

Social Network Analysis Shows Direct Evidence for Social Transmission of Tool Use in Wild Chimpanzees

Authors:

Hobalter et al

Abstract:

Social network analysis methods have made it possible to test whether novel behaviors in animals spread through individual or social learning. To date, however, social network analysis of wild populations has been limited to static models that cannot precisely reflect the dynamics of learning, for instance, the impact of multiple observations across time. Here, we present a novel dynamic version of network analysis that is capable of capturing temporal aspects of acquisition—that is, how successive observations by an individual influence its acquisition of the novel behavior. We apply this model to studying the spread of two novel tool-use variants, “moss-sponging” and “leaf-sponge re-use,” in the Sonso chimpanzee community of Budongo Forest, Uganda. Chimpanzees are widely considered the most “cultural” of all animal species, with 39 behaviors suspected as socially acquired, most of them in the domain of tool-use. The cultural hypothesis is supported by experimental data from captive chimpanzees and a range of observational data. However, for wild groups, there is still no direct experimental evidence for social learning, nor has there been any direct observation of social diffusion of behavioral innovations. Here, we tested both a static and a dynamic network model and found strong evidence that diffusion patterns of moss-sponging, but not leaf-sponge re-use, were significantly better explained by social than individual learning. The most conservative estimate of social transmission accounted for 85% of observed events, with an estimated 15-fold increase in learning rate for each time a novice observed an informed individual moss-sponging. We conclude that group-specific behavioral variants in wild chimpanzees can be socially learned, adding to the evidence that this prerequisite for culture originated in a common ancestor of great apes and humans, long before the advent of modern humans.

Visualizing Cultural Movement From 600 BC to Now

link.

San Francisco Grumbles

If there was a tipping point, a moment that crystallized the anger building here toward the so-called technorati for driving up housing prices and threatening the city’s bohemian identity, it came in response to a diatribe posted online in August by a young Internet entrepreneur.

The author, a start-up founder named Peter Shih, listed 10 things he hated about San Francisco. Homeless people, for example. And the “constantly PMSing” weather. And “girls who are obviously 4s and behave like they’re 9s.”

The backlash was immediate. Fliers appeared on telephone poles calling Mr. Shih a “woman hatin’ nerd toucher.” CheapAir offered him a free ticket back to New York. Readers responded that what they hated about San Francisco were “entitled” technology workers like him.

Mr. Shih, who said he received death threats after the post, deleted it and apologized.

But a nerve had been struck. As the center of the technology industry has moved north from Silicon Valley to San Francisco and the largess from tech companies has flowed into the city — Twitter’s stock offering unleashed an estimated 1,600 new millionaires — income disparities have widened sharply, housing prices have soared and orange construction cranes dot the skyline. The tech workers have, rightly or wrongly, received the blame.

link.

I think My Canadian Readers Need To Do Some Explaining...

According to a business survey done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers here are the rankings for fraud:

1. Russia.
2. South Africa
3. Kenya
4. CANADA
5. Mexico.

Hat tip to Gancho.

Care to 'splain that you not so corrupt ones? ;)

Russia is for RUSSIANS!!!

When the Russian government adopted a program several years ago intended to boost the country’s low birthrate, some commentators worried that it would increase that rate among non-Russians where it was already high and do little to raise it among ethnic Russians where the current fertility rate is far below replacement levels.

And while there has been some anecdotal evidence that the “maternal capital” program has led to an increase in the number of births, if not the fertility rate, among ethnic Russians, there are indications the program may be working just as these commentators feared and leading to an increase in both the total number of births and the fertility rate among non-Russians.

Given the increasing acceptability in Russia of openly nationalist arguments, some Russians, including at least one scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences, are now prepared to argue in public and without apology that the Russian government should provide monetary assistance only to women of ethnic Russian nationality.

Were Moscow to follow such advice, it would be violating the Russian constitution and setting the stage for a new and possibly more violent set of inter-ethnic conflicts. But even proposals to take this step from ostensibly “respectable” sources, especially if they are not immediately denounced, will further exacerbate ethnic tensions in the Russian Federation.

Today, Vladimir Lavrov, the deputy director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told a meeting of the World Russian Peoples Assembly in Yekaterinburg that the government should pay subsidies only to ethnic Russian women who give birth and not to anyone else.

According to Lavrov, “the Russian nation is the state forming state, and its fall threatens terrible conflicts like those which took place in Kondopoga and Kosovo.” The “salvation of the nation,” he continued, requires the saving of the [ethnic] Russian family and boosting the willingness of [ethnic] Russian couples to have children.

The academic historian sharply criticized the current system of giving out what the Russian government calls “maternal capital” to women without regard to their ethnic background. In fact, some of the posters advertising this program feature women with “non-Russian” images. Lavrov said any funds must go “only to mothers of Russian nationality.”

oy. Assimilation. That must be for those dirty Americans and Canadians. And French. And...

*chokes*

In 2002, British viewers of the BBC put Winston Churchill, Princess Diana and 19th century engineer Brunel at the top of their list of national heroes. Then,, last year, Russian viewers of Moscow’s “Rossiya” channel offered Aleksandr Nevsky, Stolypin and Stalin as their favorite national heroes.

I was reading an article about only what could be termed Russian Exceptionalism when I read the above paragraph...I spewed coffee all over. I wonder what the world would think if a listing like that had been made for Germans and - forgive me German readers, truly - it had come out Arminius, Frederick the Great and Hitler?

Speaking of German What-if's and of a great deal better taste:

When Benno Ohnesorg was shot on June 2, 1967 by a policeman in West Berlin during a demonstration against the Shah of Iran, the young German student became a martyr for a generation of left-wing activists. The killing triggered the radicalization of the mass protest movement in West Germany, which directed its anger against the police, the government and the conservative establishment. The poignant image of a woman cradling Benno Ohnesorg's head as he lay dying on the ground became etched in Germans' minds. But now it has emerged that the police officer who pulled the trigger was actually a spy working for the Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police. The revelation has stunned Germans and thrown a whole new light on Germany's past.

A researcher working for a government agency that manages the old communist regime's secret police records stumbled across the new information as she was carrying out research on another project. The former West Berlin cop, Karl-Heinz Kurras, has a bulging Stasi file of some 7,000 pages. Kurras, it turns out, was a member of the East German SED Communist Party as well as an active Stasi agent. He joined the West Berlin police at the age of 22 in 1950, but five years later he switched sides and went to the authorities in East Berlin. Kurras wanted to move to East Germany but he was persuaded to stay with the police in West Berlin and spy for the Stasi under the cover name of "Otto Bohl". For years, Kurras delivered sensitive information about Allied soldiers and police officers to his controllers in East Berlin. According to government officials, he was rewarded handsomely for his services. One payment alone in 1966, for instance, came to 4,500 German marks, worth just over $1000 at the time.

So what-if "Bohl" is unmasked by accident by the East German government. What would the impact be? There's a news story about it here. I am a little unconvinced that it would derail the student movement as it was. There was plenty of gunpowder laying around and something was going to light that boomski.

The Reason for KT Tunstall's Stage Name

EDINBURGH-based pop star KT Tunstall has revealed a new reason behind her stage name.

The singer, 32, had previously said she changed her childhood name Katie because it "reminded her of a buxom maid".

However, she now says it is all to do with geology. She said songwriter Billy Bragg found a term called the "KT Impact, which marks the start of the extinction of the dinosaurs".

kewl...and a bummer. Too bad she didn't find it herself.

Two Shocks for My Ukrainian Immigrant Wife

This weekend my wife had two cultural shocks. Both horrified her. Both were absolutely strange to her. One, she said, explained more about some of the people we know that are Baby Boomers (and this was not a good bit of praise either). The other generated as unflattering comments from her, but in the end depressed her and even almost brought her to tears. The reason for these reactions was that we watched two different documentaries. The first was the PBS show "The American Experience" about the Summer of Love. The second was the CNN 'report' entitled "Czar Putin."

The first show "The American Experience" talked about the rise and fall of the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco, California. My wife's reaction to the Boomers and their experiment with the counterculture was negative to the extreme, truthfully. I am not a huge fan of the actions of the previous generation, truth be told, but I also grew up with it at least in the background. My wife did not. In fact, my wife grew up in the Soviet Union, and then after its collapse, the independent country of Ukraine. What she grew up with, what her family went through, and what her culture was were simply fundamentally different. She came away with the thought that the Baby Boomers were just, plain bat-shibbit nuts. She also said that it explained a lot of the actions and politics of those who are my parents' generation from her point of view. Her views are a little harsh, but interesting. She does ahve some good points: how in the world people could believe their "utopia" could even work whatsoever is even beyond me. I guess I am just too much of Gen X to see otherwise.

The second shock for my wife was the CNN report of 'Czar Putin.' It was about Russia under Putin and the then upcoming election (the one this past Sunday). It almost brought my wife to tears. She couldn't understand why Russians were letting Putin do what he's doing to Russia. At the same time, she also questioned whether she would be thinking along those lines if she'd stayed in Ukraine. She was depressed big time by the end and made the comment that she thought Putin had a lot in common with Hitler. The parallels are not that far apart. However, to be fair, the documentary didn't spend enough time talking to Putin's people to try to explain why they thought what they thought. To explain what they thought, CNN's crew turned to the opposition which will, of course, paint it as nasty as can be. Those of you that read this blog KNOW I am not a fan of Putin, but I can also see certain things are being manipulated a bit in the presentation even if the thrust of things happen to be true. The comment from a Putin supporter that was interviewed was something along the lines of "So long as Russia strong and there is money to be made, why should we care about what they do at the top?" Lyuda said, "Every Russian thinks they are a Czar and that's why they want to be led by a Czar, not a President. Americans love stories about people coming from the masses and outdoing those at the top [underdog stories]. That's very not Russian." It's pretty sad. It left my wife pretty depressed for a while. I was able to cheer her up though. No worries.

Right now, Lyuda's feeling a little betwixt and between. She no longer fits in with her Ukrainian friends from back home: she's been Americanized to that much of a degree. Frex, we thought about sending a copy of 'Czar Putin' to our friend in Ukraine that's a party member of the Party of Regions, but decided that he probably wouldn't see it in even close to the same light as Lyuda. However, at the same time Lyuda doesn't feel that she fits in here with Americans as yet and often gets annoyed with us. Her student cohorts are especially nuts as far as she is concerned and what we allow and tolerate amongst us for dissenting points of view baffles her, but she'd rather live amongst those that annoy and be free-er than what she had in Ukraine. Her Americanization is fascinating to watch, but the frustrations it brings are something I wish she could be spared.