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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Very Interesting
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
Scientist are trying to figure out why a certain group of chimpanzees are acting in a why that is not connected to food or status. They have been observed throwing stones against trees, building cairns.
Is this a ritualized behavior? If so, why?
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22219
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Is this a ritualized behavior?
I'm reminded of numerous episodes of the Time Team where Tony Robinson has just been told by an archaeologist about what the particular chip of pot or faint outline of a ditch says about what people had been doing at a site, and when he asks why people did that gets told that it's "ritual". To paraphrase his responses "You archaeologists always say that. When you don't know why people did something you say it was ritualised behaviour!".
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
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# 1468
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Posted
And "religious" is often substituted for ritualized. Painting on a cave wall? Figurine or doll? Strangely-shaped, unidentifiable artifact? Religious.
I skimmed some of the article. Maybe the chimps are doing something new, maybe not. Chimps use and make tools; have cultures and etiquette (bonobos! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) ); are curious; and experiment. Etc. I don't think it's a huge leap for them to throw things and pile things, and try out different ways of doing all that.
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--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Would it be ridiculous to suggest that chimps throw rocks at trees just to practice throwing? They are know to use tools, why wouldn't they take steps to learn how to use them?
I do realise this would require abstract thinking, but why not?
And a pile is simply the most rudimentary of storage devices; if you know you are going to need a lot if something, you make a pile if it.
[ 06. March 2016, 04:52: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Belle Ringer
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# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
And "religious" is often substituted for ritualized. Painting on a cave wall? Figurine or doll? Strangely-shaped, unidentifiable artifact? Religious.
I teased a professional archeologist about this. He laughed and said "we hate to admit 'I don't know."
As to the chimps, does everything have to be strictly functional? Puppies play, humans sometimes toss a stone in water just to watch the ripples, children like building towers of blocks; could chimps tossing stones or building cairns be play?
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
And "religious" is often substituted for ritualized. Painting on a cave wall? Figurine or doll? Strangely-shaped, unidentifiable artifact? Religious.
I remember G.K. Chesterton suggesting that the cave paintings at Lascaux were actually decorations on the wall of the nursery, comparable to contemporary wallpaper with images of elephants or kitties.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
It reminds me of groups of bored youths hanging round with nothing much to do except chuck stones at something. Who's to say the same impulse isn't at work here?
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
As to the chimps, does everything have to be strictly functional? Puppies play, humans sometimes toss a stone in water just to watch the ripples, children like building towers of blocks; could chimps tossing stones or building cairns be play?
Play is practice. Watch a kitten pouncing, it's practicing hunting. Children play to practice being grown up. Chimps throwing stones could well be practicing using stones to kill (they are very territorial and viscous animals, often ripping the faces off rivals and eating their babies)
But what if it were early ritual/religious behaviour? Such behaviour in humans, or our common ancestor with the chimps, must have emerged at some point.
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Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Frankenstein
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# 16198
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Posted
If we were able to see our ancestors of a million years ago, it is unlikely they would be much more advanced than our chimp cousins.
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Raptor Eye
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# 16649
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Posted
They seem to like to play, especially when we are watching them. But a report I heard said that they returned to cairns of stones they had built, and sat in silence for a while........
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
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que sais-je
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# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
And "religious" is often substituted for ritualized. Painting on a cave wall? Figurine or doll? Strangely-shaped, unidentifiable artifact? Religious.
I remember G.K. Chesterton suggesting that the cave paintings at Lascaux were actually decorations on the wall of the nursery, comparable to contemporary wallpaper with images of elephants or kitties.
Several years ago there was an article in New Scientist by an archaeologist who had studied the hand prints on cave walls and decided most of them were adolescent. Get a bunch of teenagers away from adult supervision. What do they do? Cover the walls with images of sex, violence and whatever they find exciting (hunting?).
A couple of hundred yards from my house is an old tunnel under a railway line. Groups of teenagers gather there. Guess what they do?
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
They seem to like to play, especially when we are watching them. But a report I heard said that they returned to cairns of stones they had built, and sat in silence for a while........
Perhaps we're seeing the dawn of aesthetic appreciation?
Or perhaps they're just bored. They can't be active all the time (or asleep as an alternative) and have to sit somewhere. Throwing stones at trees doesn't strike me as an expression of worship, unless they've decided that the trees are infested by demons.
And if they had decided that, you'd see a lot more fear and propitiation going on generally. Primitive worship usually involves tangible offerings. If they start leaving fruit in the cairns (or piles of rocks) - and especially if they discourage anyone touching it - then time to reconsider.
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
All of which (re. above posts), might suggest religion and ritual practice is in some way juvenile, adolescent or infantile.
Interesting because this is often the charge made by proponents of religion towards secular fun seekers.
I've always felt early humans succumbed to religion due to a combination of fear and a heightened awareness of their surroundings or predicament. We can only pressume it became more developed from there.
There's no reason to believe the our closest member in the animal kingdom, in terms of DNA, wouldn't also exibit primitive traits of ritual behaviour and quest for transience.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Would it be ridiculous to suggest that chimps throw rocks at trees just to practice throwing? They are know to use tools, why wouldn't they take steps to learn how to use them?
It would require the chimps using stones as projectiles in other situations. Do they throw stones to deter predators, for example? If they are practicing stone throwing skills that they don't use anywhere else then that is as interesting as if they were making cairns for the pure aesthetic. That's similar to practicing kicking a football for no other reason than being good at kicking a football (which, admittedly in our societies can result in earning lots of money), chimps engaged in sports unrelated to everyday activities.
quote:
And a pile is simply the most rudimentary of storage devices; if you know you are going to need a lot if something, you make a pile if it.
In many human situations a pile is a functional thing, but there are undoubtedly ancient piles of stones that people think have more significance. One of our students, many years ago, was an archaeologist studying particular piles of stones - in her case she was dating these things to determine when, and for how long, they were used. And, they were rubbish tips (archaeologists love rubbish tips), piles of stones that had been heated repeatedly then thrown on a pile - heating rocks in a fire then adding them to water being about the only way of boiling water and cooking food in it when you don't have pots that can sit on a fire (which didn't stop some archaeologists speculating about saunas!). Agriculture also generates piles of stones - when you plow a field you turn up lots of stones that you don't really want there, so what do you do? You follow the plow and pick up the stones, which you then throw onto piles beside the field, maybe if they're suitable turn them into a wall as a field boundary.
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Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
The dawn of human sapience a couple or three hundred thousand years ago would have been a literal living nightmare. Dream and sensory data and memory and emotion and social interaction with sign language and vocalization: what a maelstrom in a skull crucible.
Religion rapidly emerged and remains, in Huxley's wonderful phrase, man's attempt to communicate with the weather. Everything had a spirit. And we are STILL all de facto animists. Superstitious super-monkeys. Throwing rocks at trees brings The Cube in Arabic to mind. Testosterone will out. Violence is a great substitute for feeling and nakedly sharing our vulnerability.
The most horrific bit of Ian M. Banks' Matter is when a psychotic AI doomsday device grabs the mind of a human who ends up feeling like someone has paralysed him and is right behind him mining his mind. He is constantly trying to turn his mind round to see what's going on.
Just recently I've felt that in 'trying to work things out', theologically and at work. I dream about work and it's no better when I wake up and ... get to work. The problems I'm dealing with are Kafka-esque. Who'd have thought that systems analysis could be like that? Because human behaviour is a strong, scary, irrational component. Ignorance and weakness have not diminished since the mid-Pleistocene, even with augmented human analytical capabilities. They - with computers - can actually make it worse. I can define the requirement in one line. It is IMPOSSIBLE to functionally decompose it. But I must.
Theologically: Trying to square the circle of God as He REALLY must be and even as revealed ONLY in Christ is another mind eater, Ouroboros style.
In all of this NOTHING is graspable. Tellable. Like the disjointed observations I make above. As disjointed as the gospels.
So we make up hugely intricate, overwhelming, beguiling, distracting fictions to 'make sense', make order out of chaos and make it worse. I'm watching my 85 year old mother rage against the dying of the light in the childishly simple decision making necessary to sell her house. The 'problem' will not let her go. And the problem is her.
I have to let her fail AND be kind at the same time. The first is relatively easy.
She'd be a darn sight better off throwing rocks at hollow trees. It's like watching somebody in their nightmare, seeing their nightmare and you cannot wake them up. Like Syria. The working class letting Cameron remove the NHS from behind the sign.
200,000 thousand years ago, humanity woke up INTO a nightmare. We're only just beginning to relax, to realise that only ONE thing matters in the meaningless endless confusion.
Kindness.
Still very much a minority pursuit. For myself included.
It's not how religious the chimps are being. It's how chimp the religious are being.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
[
Or perhaps they're just bored. They can't be active all the time (or asleep as an alternative) and have to sit somewhere.
Yes - in the wild they wouldn't have time to be bored.
Martin60 ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
It's certainly been enjoyable reading all the speculation about these observations, some of it interesting and cogent, some of it very airy-fairy, and some of it Scotch mist.
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
IMHO its just another case of anthropomorphism: the only thing that stands out about the reports is that they are coming from otherwise respectable scientists.
Why is it religiously symbolic that these chimps chuck stones at a particular tree? My twin sons had a favourite tree at which they shot cap guns and arrows - did that amount to their own primitive 'religion'? I think not!
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's not how religious the chimps are being. It's how chimp the religious are being.
That's always going to be a thing while there are still primates in the church.
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
Maybe the chimps have been reading Wittgenstein, where he says that ritual
quote:
does not aim at anything; rather, we behave in this way and then are satisfied.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Adeodatus: Maybe the chimps have been reading Wittgenstein
They cobbled it together on 10,000 typewriters.
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's not how religious the chimps are being. It's how chimp the religious are being.
That's always going to be a thing while there are still primates in the church.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) Thanks folks, thought there'd be a rib-tickler in here somewhere.
Great post Martin .
I would have liked to be a fly on a rock watching when our ancestors, quite suddenly I believe, had that massive WTF moment. They looked up at the stars and wondered, whereas I think are little chimp friends are a long long way from that.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Ariel, Adeodatus, LeRoc: Beyond The Fringe.
royln. We need a Proust, meets Greg Bear, meets William Golding to explore that moment, that I suspect was far more gradual, developmental, in repeated ripples of overlapping lives of decades on an increasing tide of myriad (oooooooooh) years, less millennia or even centuries.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
The evolution of consciousness is certainly fascinating, and I suppose many theists want to claim that human consciousness is very special. Well, clearly it is, since it includes an awareness of itself, and an ability to communicate about that.
But I suppose you can trace it back to animals who have sensory organs, and nervous systems, and begin to cognize their environment, including other animals. For example, worms are able to detect light, and types of soil, etc.
From worm to mind in a few easy steps?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The gulf from dirt to worm is far vaster than from worm to us. I'm with Haeckel on each of us recapitulating our psychological phylogeny in our ontogeny. I've always liked Isaiah's Ineffable's 'Fear not, thou worm Jacob'.
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Love wins
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