Human sans Chimp

Human sans Chimp In the beginning, there was ape-like ‘humans’. Later, there was human-like humans. What happened between? It is clear that there must be some model of consciousness or human cognitive capacity which is essentially human sans chimp. If you take an EEA human, remove every capacity which is shared with the chimp, what would be left over? Let’s take an example for illustrative purposes. Let’s say that humans have 3D vision and chimps do not. If we subtract the chimp from human then, in this example, we subtract all visual capabilities except the cognitive facilitation of 3D vision. Now we can imagine that if this left over bit were added to the chimp or subtracted from the human then chimp and human vision would be equal. We can approach this thought experiment in several ways - what do we add to the chimp to get a human; what do we subtract from the human to get a chimp; and what is left over if you subtract the chimp from human. Let’s now consider a real example ~ language. And this is where things really become interesting. What needs to be added to, say, Kanzi, for him to communicate like a human. Physical ability to speak is obviously lacking, but an ability to communicate symbolically is present and, when you think about it, no-one reading these words knows whether or not I can physically articulate these words. Clearly humans have bigger brains, so more of whatever the chimp is capable of would come if they also had a bigger brain. This is true of many domains but may well not include vision, olfaction and the acuity of other sensory domains. We now consider the shedding of capacity of a human. If the brain is made smaller, would the human be restricted to communicating on a level similar to Kanzi or would the form of the communication still be different? Humans learning a new language, where they only know a few words, are still likely to try to communicate abstract concepts beyond Kanzi. A simple restriction of vocabulary of a human or an increase in the chimp would not, in my opinion, be sufficient. I’m interested to hear what capacity members think is the most central one that is present in the human but absent in the chimp - what, apart from mere quantity, would be showing when we subtract chimp from human? What do we have to add to the chimp to get human-like communication? What do we have to take away from the human to arrive at a Kanzi? What is left over if you subtract a Kanzi from an average Jo?

Chimps found using spears

Chimps found using spears
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Genes, Brains, and Primates

Citation: Reinius B, Saetre P, Leonard JA, Blekhman R, Merino-Martinez R, et al. (2008) An Evolutionarily Conserved Sexual Signature in the Primate Brain. PLoS Genet 4(6): e1000100. doi:10.1371/ journal.pgen. 1000100
An Evolutionarily Conserved Sexual Signature in the Primate Brain
Björn Reinius1, Peter Saetre1,2, Jennifer A. Leonard3, Ran Blekhman4, Roxana Merino-Martinez5, Yoav Gilad4, Elena Jazin1*
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Britain’s last Neanderthals were more sophisticated than we thought

An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe’s last Neanderthals. It provides a snapshot of a thriving, developing population – rather than communities on the verge of extinction.

Great apes think ahead

Apes can plan for their future needs just as we humans can – by using self-control and imagining future events. Mathias and Helena Osvath’s research, from Lunds University Cognitive Science in Sweden, is the first to provide conclusive evidence of advanced planning capacities in non-human species. Their findings are published online this week in Springer’s journal, Animal Cognition.

News: Chimps Not So Selfish - Comforting Behavior May Well Be Expression Of Empathy

ScienceDaily (Jun. 19, 2008) — Compared to their sex-mad, peace-loving bonobo counterparts, chimpanzees are often seen as a scheming, war-mongering, and selfish species. As both apes are allegedly our closest relatives, together they are often depicted as representing the two extremes of human behaviour.
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Scientists Find Monkeys Who Can Fish [the difference between humans and animals is overrated]

Perhaps this is the type of behavior that provided survival potential to human ancestors who could develop new food sources when things got tough.
Continue reading Scientists Find Monkeys Who Can Fish [the difference between humans and animals is overrated]…

Genetic mutation linked to walking on all 4s

This is a load of absolute rubbish - those effected individuals can not walk on two legs as well as bonobos, that spend up to a third of their time walking on TWO legs. They can not only walk considerable distances, but they can carry young on their back and manipulate treats (eg, cane sugar, fruit etc) at the same time, i.e. while they are walking. If these individuals have a missing gene, then the missing gene is not missing from pan paniscus.

Infectious Evolution: ancient virus hit apes, not our ancestors, in the genes

A vicious virus infected ancestral chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa between 4 million and 3 million years ago. Not only did it kill a great many of these primates, but it also infiltrated the surviving animals’ genomes, altering the course of evolution. That’s the picture emerging from a new analysis of modern-primate DNA.
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Genetic evidence and the modern human origins debate

A continued debate in anthropology concerns the evolutionary origin of ‘anatomically modern humans’ (Homo sapiens sapiens). Different models have been proposed to examine the related questions of (1) where and when anatomically modern humans first appeared and (2) the genetic and evolutionary relationship between modern humans and earlier human populations. Genetic data have been increasingly used to address these questions. Genetic data on living human populations have been used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the human species by considering how global patterns of human variation could be produced given different evolutionary scenarios. Of particular interest are gene trees that reconstruct the time and place of the most recent common ancestor of humanity for a given haplotype and the analysis of regional differences in genetic diversity. Ancient DNA has also allowed a direct assessment of genetic variation in European Neandertals. Together with the fossil record, genetic data provide insight into the origin of modern humans. The evidence points to an African origin of modern humans dating back to 200 000 years followed by later expansions of moderns out of Africa across the Old World. What is less clear is what happened when these early modern humans met preexisting ‘archaic human’ populations outside of Africa. At present, it is difficult to distinguish between a model of total genetic replacement and a model that includes some degree of genetic mixture.

Were Neanderthals a sub-species of erectus?

Friday, November 30, 2007
Convergent evolution?
In an earlier post, I discussed how mtDNA evidence now shows that the Neanderthals ranged at least as far east as Lake Baikal. This finding is significant because there no longer seems to have been any geographical or ecological barrier to Neanderthal occupation throughout non-tropical Eurasia.
Continue reading Were Neanderthals a sub-species of erectus?…

Ape Genius reveals depth of animal intelligence

Chimpanzees in Senegal make and sharpen spears with their teeth to go hunting. Like our own ancestors they have learned to use tools to kill their quarry more effectively.

Neanderthals were separate species, says new human family tree

A new, simplified family tree of humanity, published on Sunday, has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears.

Hominin life history: reconstruction and evolution.

Note that the Eurasians are closer to modern humans.
Continue reading Hominin life history: reconstruction and evolution….

Human line ‘nearly split in two’

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.

See also Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago (genetic study).

Slowly-developing primates definitely not dim-witted

Some primates have evolved big brains because their extra brainpower helps them live and reproduce longer, an advantage that outweighs the demands of extra years of growth and development they spend reaching adulthood, anthropologists from Duke University and the University of Zurich have concluded in a new study.

Neanderthals speak out after 30,000 years

The image of the Neandertal reconstuction portrays a VERY fair-skinned boy!

ARE HUMAN BRAINS UNIQUE?

Scientists compared the genetic sequences of ethnically and geographically diverse people from around the world and found that the genes which code for the nervous systems, had some sequence differences (known as polymorphisms) among individuals. By analyzing human and chimpanzee polymorphism patterns, genetic probabilities and various other genetic tools, and geographical distributions, they found evidence that some of these genes are experiencing ongoing positive selection in humans. They calculated that one genetic variant of microcephalin arose approximately 37,000 years ago, which coincides with the emergence of culturally modern humans, and it increased in frequency too rapidly to be compatible with random genetic drift or population migration. This suggests that it underwent positive selection.[xxi] An ASPM variant arose about 5800 years ago, coincident with the spread of agriculture, cities and the first record of written language. It too is found in such high frequencies in the population, that it indicates strong positive selection.[xxii]

African Eve, Eurasian Adam: Age and Origin of the Human Species

The speciation event that produced Homo sapiens sapiens could not have occurred contemporaneously in more than a very few individuals. It follows that those few s. sapiens would have possessed a very restricted sample of the progenitor species’ genetic diversity. However, the diversity observed in current populations implies that there were never less than several thousand breeding pairs in the human ancestry (Harpending et al., 1998). Accordingly, the founding s. sapiens and their descendants must have interbred with the progenitor species (and perhaps other pre-human populations) in order to preserve the diversity which exists today. While some changes in the genome must have occurred after the speciation event, the “lifetimes” of the genetic elements considered (in the works cited here) are far longer than new estimates of s. sapiens’ age (Mountain et al., 1994). As a consequence, most of the current diversity must be the result of interbreeding with pre-human populations.

Neanderthals wore make-up and liked to chat

Could Neanderthals speak? The answer may depend on whether they used make-up.

Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, France, has found crafted lumps of pigment – essentially crayons – left behind by Neanderthals across Europe.