Culture is a technology.
Jan. 4th, 2003 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheStudy Suggests Orangutans Are Cultured
Some orangutan parents teach their offspring to use leaves as napkins. Others say good night with a spluttering, juicy raspberry. And still others get water from a hole by dipping a branch and then licking the leaves.
These are examples, researchers say, that prove the orangutan is a cultured ape, able to learn new living habits and to pass them along to the next generation.
The discovery, reported in a study appearing Friday in the journal Science, suggests that early primates, which include the ancestors of humans, may have developed the ability to invent new behaviors, such as tool use, as early as 14 million years ago. That would be some 6 million years earlier than once believed.
"If the orangutans have culture, then it tells us that the capacity to develop culture is very ancient," says Birute Galdikas, a co-author of the study.
[...] Culture, in the scientific sense, is the ability to invent new behaviors that are adopted by the population group and are passed along to succeeding generations.
Orangutan culture, while crude by human standards, is culture nonetheless. It developed and is practiced independently by different groups and succeeding generations in the same way that human societies develop and perpetuate unique forms of music, architecture, language, clothing and art.
[...] "Developing this culture is indicative that their cognitive level is very high," said Galdikas, who has studied the animals in the wild for 30 years. "Orangutans are as intelligent as chimpanzees and gorillas, but they have a different kind of mentality and personality."
Some orangutan parents teach their offspring to use leaves as napkins. Others say good night with a spluttering, juicy raspberry. And still others get water from a hole by dipping a branch and then licking the leaves.
These are examples, researchers say, that prove the orangutan is a cultured ape, able to learn new living habits and to pass them along to the next generation.
The discovery, reported in a study appearing Friday in the journal Science, suggests that early primates, which include the ancestors of humans, may have developed the ability to invent new behaviors, such as tool use, as early as 14 million years ago. That would be some 6 million years earlier than once believed.
"If the orangutans have culture, then it tells us that the capacity to develop culture is very ancient," says Birute Galdikas, a co-author of the study.
[...] Culture, in the scientific sense, is the ability to invent new behaviors that are adopted by the population group and are passed along to succeeding generations.
Orangutan culture, while crude by human standards, is culture nonetheless. It developed and is practiced independently by different groups and succeeding generations in the same way that human societies develop and perpetuate unique forms of music, architecture, language, clothing and art.
[...] "Developing this culture is indicative that their cognitive level is very high," said Galdikas, who has studied the animals in the wild for 30 years. "Orangutans are as intelligent as chimpanzees and gorillas, but they have a different kind of mentality and personality."
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-03 11:23 pm (UTC)learned cultural behaviour and rudimentary linguistics.
There's many great studies done on this, and I can try to
find them, they're mostly published in anthropology journals,
which I haven't had access to since college - if your interested
in seeing more on that subject.
[this message brought to you by your friendly neighborhood anthropologist]
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-03 11:29 pm (UTC)I came into anthropology very late--that is, after I'd already graduated from college. For awhile, I was considering going into grad school for cultural anthropology (but I really don't have the background for that). So I definitely need further edification along anthro lines....
Re:
Date: 2003-01-03 11:36 pm (UTC)We fear getting too clannish, always after new blood and new ideas.
...and I'll see what I can dig up, it may take some weeks as I'll be treading back some years.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-04 01:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-04 01:59 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-04 03:02 am (UTC)