Evolutionary Primatology

Historical Social Consciousness - Social-Moral Order  & Spiritual-religious beliefs as social consciousness and social-moral order
Ramon Reyes highlights the unifying aspect of spirituality in prehistoric Philippine societies and early human societies: “In sum, social and moral order encompasses the living the dead the deities and the spirits.”  That is the spiritual and religious beliefs of early human societies created and maintained a social consciousness – a social-moral order. You can see in the mythology of Zeus that the same principle applies. Zeus epitomized law and order, wisdom, hospitality and oaths – all prosocial values. 

Ramon Reyes research supports Durkheim’s argument: “Indeed, the whole Ifugao social order, including practical ways of life, social institutions and rules, morality and everything else, constitutes a unitary system; and it is looked upon as a religious phenomenon of supernatural origin. Describing an example of this prehistoric Filipino world-view, an anthropologist says,. . .“In treating the environment as social, the people are provided with an ordered explanation of 'natural' phenomena. In sum, one social and moral order encompasses the living, the dead, the deities and the spirits, and the total environment.”
 
Zeus: Myths as symbolic maps of social consciousness
Ancient Greek spiritual beliefs – particularly Zeus – as a social consciousness and social-moral order. Zeus as a symbol was “The founder of kingly power, of law and of order, whence Dice, Themis and Nemesis are his assistants. For the same reason he protects the assembly of the people (agoraios), the meetings of the council (boulaios), and as he presides over the whole state, so also over every house and family. He also watched over the sanctity of the oath (horkios), the law of hospitality (xenios), and protected suppliants. He avenged those who were wronged, and punished those who had committed a crime, for he watched the doings and sufferings of all men.”

There are almost fifty storm gods in different cultures. Often, the thunder god, like Zeus, is the chief among the other gods. The fierce, hammer wielding Thor, was the god of storms, thunder, lightning as well as fertility and strength in Norse mythology. Thor fights a series of battles with the sea serpent Jormung and, as well as accomplishing many feats of strength. In Hinduism, Indra, the god of rain and thunderstorms, rides a white elephant and wields a thunderbolt named vajra. Indra is the king of gods and leader of the Devas. He is the god of war, representing strength and courage. Indra, the slayer of the dragon-serpent vrtra, wages unending war against the Asuras demons. Like the Greek god Zeus, whose home was Mount Olympus, Indra’s home is on a mountaintop, Mount Meru in heaven. Zeus, after overthrowing the god Cronus, became the ruler of the gods. Greek art frequently depicted Zeus holding a thunderbolt.

Comparative data suggest that various preadaptations to human speech evolved at different times for different functions, especially adaptations to
(a) an aquarboreal lifestyle in Mio-Pliocene hominoids,
(b) a littoral lifestyle in Pleistocene Homo (early-Pleistocene coastal dispersal model), e.g.
(1) descent of the larynx relative to the hyoid bone (Miocene adaptation for loud and varied territorial duets),
(2) descent of the hyoid relative to the palate, smooth and globular tongue, small mouth, parabolic closed tooth-row with incisiform canines, vaulted and smooth palate with reduction of palatal ridges, MYH16 loss and reduced biting-chewing musculature (Pleistocene suction and swallowing of aquatic foods),
(3) voluntary control of breathing musculature (Pleistocene littoral diving during coastal dispersal of Homo),
(4) cerebral expansion (aquatic foods rich in brain-specific nutrients such as DHA, iodine, taurine and oligo-elements),
(5) vocal learning (arguably facilitating localization of offspring).

Discoverers of the hominid naledi fossils (300-250 ka, Gauteng, southern Africa, first described in 2015) anthropocentrically assume that naledi (1) belonged to the genus Homo, (2) buried their dead in caves, (3) were tool makers, (4) ran over African plains. Comparative anatomy shows these assumptions to be wrong, and suggests that naledi (1) generally resembled bonobos and belonged to the genus Pan or Australopithecus, (2) fossilized in a natural way, (3) were no better tool makers than extant chimpanzees are, (4) spent an important part of their day wading bipedally in forest swamps or wetlands, in search for wetland foods, possibly waterlilies or other aquatic herbaceous vegetation (AHV, possibly containing small snails), like bonobos and lowland gorillas still do but more frequently.

Many Native American Cultures identify that they have “always been here,” that they are truly indigenous to the Americas. Yet, a vocal majority of American archaeologists have until 1997  steadfastly advocated a less than 13,500-year Terminal Ice Age arrival of people from Northeast Asia. Needless to say, a new chapter culminating from the now widespread distinction of an enduring habitation begs a reappraisal of theoretical premises, some dismissed over a hundred years ago. An American Wellspring, Volume One, will present a general overview of the science of evolutionary anthropology and theories outlining the origins of Native Americans and synthesize a new alternative that embraces the New World as the cradle of humankind. It promises to illuminate what many theologians and scientists have long characterized as, an unheralded place to start in anticipating our human beginnings. The language of anthropology and its assorted terms will be refined as we examine lost horizons of this long-overlooked evolutionary model. Following the immediate European Discovery of the Western Hemisphere, First world People and Second world Inhabitants and the initial separation of them was a major topic of discussion. A Second world evolutionary origin was specifically set aside although eminent scholars at the turn of the XIX were willing to “risk their reputations” in favor of an Autochthonous American origin for all of Humanity.

Comparative data suggest that various preadaptations to human speech evolved at different times for different functions, especially adaptations to (a) an aquarboreal lifestyle in Mio-Pliocene hominoids, (b) a littoral lifestyle in Pleistocene Homo (early-Pleistocene coastal dispersal model), e.g. (1) descent of the larynx relative to the hyoid bone (Miocene adaptation for loud and varied territorial duets), (2) descent of the hyoid relative to the palate, smooth and globular tongue, small mouth, parabolic closed tooth-row with incisiform canines, vaulted and smooth palate with reduction of palatal ridges, MYH16 loss and reduced biting-chewing musculature (Pleistocene suction and swallowing of aquatic foods), (3) voluntary control of breathing musculature (Pleistocene littoral diving during coastal dispersal of Homo), (4) cerebral expansion (aquatic foods rich in brain-specific nutrients such as DHA, iodine, taurine and oligo-elements), (5) vocal learning (arguably facilitating localization of offspring).

Multilevel societies are unique in their ability to facilitate the maintenance of strong and consistent social bonds among some individuals while allowing separation among others, which may be especially important when social and sexual bonds carry significant and reliable benefits to individuals within social groups. Here we examine the importance of social and sexual bonds in the multilevel society of hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) and apply these principles to social evolution in Plio-Pleistocene hominins. The behavior, adaptations, and socioecology of baboons (Papio spp.) have long been recognized as providing an important comparative sample to elucidate the processes of human evolution, and the social system of hamadryas baboons in particular shares even more similarities with humans than that of other baboons. Here we draw parallels between processes during the evolution of hamadryas social organization and those characterizing late Pliocene or early Pleistocene hominins, most likely Homo erectus. The higher costs of reproduction faced by female Homo erectus, exacerbated by an increased reliance on difficult to acquire, nutrient-dense foods, are commonly thought to have been alleviated by a strengthening of male–female bonds (via male provisioning and the evolution of monogamy) or by the assistance of older, postreproductive females (via grandmothering). We suggest that both of these social arrangements could have been present in Plio-Pleistocene hominins if we assume the development of a multilevel society such as that in hamadryas baboons. The evolution of a multilevel society thus underlies the adaptive potential for the complexity that we see in modern human social organization.

Oreopithecus has been described as a folivore based on its dental morphology.  SEM studies help to confirm this dietary signal.  Low-magnification (35x) of dental microwear features is utilized to interpret two specimens attributed to upper Miocene Oreopithecus, IGF 11778 and IGF 10886 to examine whether it is positioned closer to extant primate folivores (Colobus polykomos and Procolobus badius), hard-object feeders (Cebus apella), frugivores (Pan paniscus and P. troglodytes), frugivore-folivores (Gorilla gorilla) or folivore-frugivores (Papio ursinus).  Microwear scars were counted twice (and averaged) on the paracone of the second molar within a 0.4 mm by 0.4 mm ocular reticle using an external light source to manifest refractive small pits and fine scratches, non-refractive large pits and coarse scratches, trench-like hypercoarse scratches and crater-like puncture pits.  ANOVA show that taxa can be differentiated on the basis of small pits and fine scratches.  Although Papio ursinus and Pan troglodytes show moderate to high frequencies of fine scratches, these taxa are distinct in number of small pits with the former showing relatively fewer and the latter exhibiting a relatively greater frequency.  Oreopithecus lies between these extremes and in this way is similar to Cebus apella although differences between Oreopithecus and Cebus occur in relative frequency of fine scratches; Cebus exhibits relatively few and Oreopithecus exhibits moderate numbers.  Principal components analysis of small pits, fine scratches, hypercoarse scratches and puncture pits separates Oreopithecus and Papio from Gorilla.  Of the species sampled, the dental microwear of Oreopithecus most closely approximates the dietary signal derived from Papio ursinus.

Over the past decade discussions on the incompatibilities between geometric morphometrics and phylogenetics have largely gone unheeded with their growing use in many subfields of palaeontology. To examine the potential implications of phylogenetic reconstructions and geometric morphometric data, I compared resultant topologies with the resolved phylogeny for the extant Hominidae. A large sample (n=172) of adult hominid crania representing 12 species/subspecies largely comprising computed tomography (CT) scans were generated into three-dimensional (3D) virtual models and 16 3D landmarks digitised on the ectocranial surface of the occipital bone. Results indicated that in Principal Component Analysis (PCA) all hominid taxa differentiated relative to interspecific morphology. The phylogenetic reconstructions showed that the topologies were highly inconsistent with the resolved phylogeny although clades formed on the basis of allometric effects on morphology and the presence of robusticity/gracility. This study highlights the significant implications for phylogenies involving fossil taxa where topologies are unlikely to be consistent with true evolutionary phylogeny although potential remains to examine shared-morphologies between extant and fossil taxa possibly yielding new information.

This exploration of how the unique susceptibility of the modern human brain to neurodegenerative illnesses appears to be related to that brain’s acquisition of complex cognitive functions is informed by both neuroscientific data and present understanding of recent human evolution. The near-absence of such pathologies in other extant primates prompts an analysis of the differences between the human and ape brains, which relate both to relative size and structure. Relevant human brain illnesses implicate specific brain areas in these pathologies, such as the frontal cortex, temporal and parietal lobes, limbic system and basal ganglia in illness like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s disease and others. The expansion of these same areas has also facilitated the advanced cognitive abilities marking the emergence of Homo sapiens. The authors then explore the questions of when, in this process, the brain diseases first established themselves in the genome, and why natural evolutionary processes failed to select against them. Based on the similarly deleterious introduction of gracility in formerly robust human populations, attributed to breeding mate selection becoming influenced by cultural constructs, the hypothesis is proposed that the dramatic rise of culture over the past 40,000 years or so also rendered the toleration of these brain pathologies possible. Just as the modern human has become a fetalized, neotenous form of ape through unintended self-domestication, a similar process also protected unfavorable mutations of recent encephalization, such as demyelination, against natural selection.

Where do our images about early hominids come from? In this fascinating in-depth study, David Van Reybrouck demonstrates how input from ethnography and primatology has deeply influenced our visions about the past from the 19th century to this day – often far beyond the available evidence. Victorian scholars were keen to look at contemporary Australian and Tasmanian aboriginals to understand the enigmatic Neanderthal fossils. Likewise, today’s primatologists debate to what extent bonobos, baboons or chimps may be regarded as stand-ins for early human ancestors. The belief that the contemporary world provides ‘living links’ still goes strong. Such primate models, Van Reybrouck argues, continue the highly problematic ‘comparative method’ of the Victorian times. He goes on to show how the field of ethnoarchaeology has succeeded in circumventing the major pitfalls of such analogical reasoning.

A truly interdisciplinary study, this work shows how scholars working in different fields can effectively improve their methods for interpreting the deep past by understanding the historical challenges of adjacent disciplines.

Overviewing two centuries of intellectual debate in fields as diverse as archaeology, ethnography and primatology, Van Reybrouck’s book is one long plea for trying to understand the past on its own terms, rather than as facile projections from the present.

David Van Reybrouck (Bruges, 1971) was trained as an archaeologist at the universities of Leuven, Cambridge and Leiden. Before becoming a highly successful literary author (The Plague, Mission, Congo…), he worked as a historian of ideas. For more than twelve years, he was coeditor of Archaeological Dialogues. In 2011-12, he held the prestigious Cleveringa Chair at the University of Leiden.

From the Preface:


The odyssey from the Old World monkeys to the great apes and then to the development of our unique forms of social organization is, then, the overall theme of this book. The odyssey begins, as it must, with our biological roots as a primate and with change in social organization initially occurring through Darwinian evolution. The challenge, when coming forward to human societies as we know them, has been to connect our Darwinian beginnings to the current complexity of human social systems in which Darwinian evolution, with its focus on individual traits in the context of a population of interbreeding individuals, has been transformed into a new mode of evolution with change at the level of societal organization. It is the functionality of systems of organization, rather than the functionality of individual traits, that is critical to the evolutionary success of human societies. Ancestral hunter-gatherer societies developed cultural means for the expression and continuity over generations of societal practices from whose functionality individuals and families benefit. Through enculturation, individuals take on the properties, structure and features that are part of the cultural milieu that frames the way individuals and groups of individuals interact. More than a century ago, Edward B. Tylor (1924[1871]: 1) referred to culture as “that complex whole,” a characterization that still stands today as a way to identify what is different about human societies in comparison to the societies of other social mammals. It is not an extra-somatic means of information transmission that is crucial to what constitutes culture, but rather that culture refers to conceptual systems such as the kinship systems central to the formation of human societies. The origin of kinship systems as the basis for social organization, hence as a conceptual system of relations, encompasses a transition to new forms of organization subject to change by the individuals embedded within those systems of organization. It is this capacity for self-modification that makes human societies unique.