>CB: Yes, I know about those factoids. But the quantitative difference
>becomes qualitative. Also, most of those factoids involve experiments where
>humans are key organizers of the situations where the animals exhibit some
>extremely limited linguistic/symbolic ability. You don't find chimps in
>the wild with no human intervention doing much like that. It is not an
>inherent species tendency or inclination.
At the moment the evidence would most likely support your appraisal, CB.
However the work of the post-Goodal generation of researchers in Africa have
produced some pretty amazing "factoids" that aren't a result of human key
organizers. Chimps and bonobos had a virtually Africa-wide nation with a
variety of cultures, differing greatly by region. Proto-language and
symbolic communication differed region by region. As young male chimps
ranged from one territory to another they were forced to learn new customs
and new behaviors, not merely straight Darwinian "adaptation", but whole
sets of social behaviors. (I just finished reading a long Smithsonian
article on this, but damned if I can find the issue for a citation.)
I mention all of this in the past tense, although it is still true in the
limited range chimps and bonobos and other primates have left. It is 5% of
what it was at the end of WWII. The culture of chimps that was spread across
Africa has been shattered and is virtually lost. The same kinds of
non-genetic organizational "factoids" is true of elephant societies, and
there is evidence for whales too.
(I just finished reading a long Smithsonian article on this, but damned if I
can find the issue for a citation.)
As for the conceptualizations of these "inferior" animals, the current
thinking is that lingusitic / symbolic ability is something possessed by all
of us in this part of the primate family. It's an evolutionary impossibility
that H Sapiens appeared with full-blown capacity for language and abstract
visualization. Now the favorite theory is that a proto-human ancestor of
chimps, bonobos and us -- among a few others -- passed on these capacities
to some degree to all of us in the family. H Sapiens is therefore not
unique; and once again we are faced with only a measurement of quantitative
difference in many areas. (I would agree with you that the quantitative
difference has become for practical purposes a qualitative one.)
But the jury is still out, and most likely we'll extinct the chimps before
the questions are settled.
Tom
It has been said of whales:
"They are not brethren;
They are not underlings;
They are other nations..."
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