Signalling

Posted on by wanderer

Similarly to the bower bird, humans do not have highly visible physical appearance and features. We lack flashy manes, colourful bottoms, prominent cheeks, a crest, or nicely spotted furs. But like the bower birds, we do like to use objects around us as a display. Virtually all human populations on the planet like to wear accessories to their bodies, which, in many cases, increase the visibility of our bodies. Even more, virtually all human populations invest in permanent body modification of one kind or another, from an earring to amputating body parts, like circumcision. However, unlike bower birds, this decoration or modification of the bodies is done by all genders; therefore, it is not only done to attract a mating partner but also to create social links, signalling and assessment of the others, like kids sharing toys or flashing the new shoes.

Both humans and the bower birds make use of visually arousing traits that coevolved with their effect on an audience, mates. However, the incorporation of external elements directly into our body seems to be an almost unique feat of humans among vertebrates. At the moment of writing, only the bearded and Egyptian vultures have been seen to add pigmentation from natural elements like oxide baths or cow excrements to their otherwise white feathers. There is debate whether this is for protection or for mate pairing, with the most recent research pointing that the bond with partners as the most likely explanation. For bearded vultures, the female, who usually is larger than the male, tends to have a stronger red pigmentation due to the oxides, while of the two males that might be in the polygamous trio, the one that copulates the second tends to be of whiter pigmentation. This is similar for the Egyptian vultures, where the more dominant birds tend to be of yellower colour and carry stronger faeces odour. Still there is no clear agreement on their motivation. But it seems that this is an innate, and not cultural, behaviour, as acculturated Egyptian vultures raised in captivity also engage in colouring feathers once they have sources to proceed with the practice. In the non vertebrate word, only some other crustaceans and insects use elements of their environment to incorporate to their body, and usually that is done in order to camouflage, as a protection, or for matting reasons. Examples are hermit craws, caterpillars, octopuses or beetles.

Humans, on the other hand, extensively decorate themselves with external elements in virtually every society that we know of. We also have archeological records with tantalising evidence of objects that could have been used as garments going back as far as 100.000 years. Therefore, body decoration is a trait that is deeply rooted in humans and at least also for the Neanderthals, whom we repeatedly mated.

Going back to our landscape in east Africa, you can imagine that you encounter for the first time with someone that you are unfamiliar with. The first thing that you might notice is the garments that the other is wearing. They might be covered in strange black, red, yellow pigments that are not available in your area, or an extensive use of seashells of strange bones arranged in strangely appealing patterns, feathers and teeth might decorate their necks, torsos, legs, arms and head in completely different ways and fashion that you are used to see.

At this point, many emotions might come to the front, but once the ones related with fear and harm have subsided, the one that might take over you is curiosity, as we discuses with the marbles. Some of the ornaments might resonate with you as a sign of beauty, the same way that when we see a complex seashell on the beach, we have the craving for it, despite not having any use as food or protection. Or we might get attracted to another person’s tattoo, despite not representing how successful in rearing kids that person might be.

The next careful step might be an approach. You share no language, but at this point, each other probably shares the curiosity. You might point to one of the ornaments that he or she is wearing.

Pointing is, as far as we know, a universal human gesture to indicate a specific emphasis, to draw attention to the direction of what is being pointed at. Not all pointing is done with the index and an extended arm, some cultures use their look and lips or nose to point, but this seems to be an additional gesture other than the one done with the arm. Whichever way the pointing is done, we understand it to be universal and can be shared across first encounters. Even if you saw someone point with their eyes fixed to the target of interest and protrude the lips, you would probably understand the gesture straight away, as the “intention” of gesture seems to be also understood, partially, by other non-human animals.

We can expect this pointing exchange as something that has happened repeatedly all over the world with first encounters. We started to notice this interaction among distant, unknown peoples, especially since the Europeans started their extensive conquest, colonisation and exploration voyages in faraway continents. A first encounter of this kind is illustrated by the account of Cristobal Columbus when reaching the Americas, or the New World, which in fact he thought were islands far away East of Japan. He was caring several books about accounts of European voyagers who had traveled to the Asian continent in the previous centuries. Among these books was Marco Polo’s account of his life and travels in Asia.

Columbus wrote of the first encounter:

I reached the Indies in the first isle I discovered, I took by force some of the natives, that from them we might gain some information of what there was in these parts; and so it was that we immediately understood each other, either by words or signs. They are still with me and still believe that I come from heaven. They were the first to declare this wherever I went, and the others ran from house to house, and to the towns around, crying out, “Come! come! and see the men from heaven!” At every point where I landed and succeeded in talking to them, I gave them some of everything I had cloth and many other things without receiving anything in return, but they are a hopelessly timid people. It is true that since they have gained more confidence and are losing this fear, they are so unsuspicious and so generous with what they possess, that no one who had not seen it would believe it.
They never refuse anything that is asked for. They even offer it themselves, and show so much love that they would give their very hearts.

Letter of Christopher Columbus to Luis de St. Angel on his first voyage to America, 1492

Even if this event unfortunately happened because Columbus was taking natives by force, as you can notice in this account of the first encounter, there seems to be at least a shared drive for communication and signalling. This encounter happened between peoples of different continents who had never shared any communication for at least 10.000 years (if we suppose the Caribs had no knowledge of the Vikings visiting Vinland).

The basis for that first contact seems to be conducted by gesticulations and not by vocal language. We do not understand why gestures seems to be the preferred form to start bridging the communication gap, maybe because its relative simplicity compared to vocal expression, or the existence of these universal gestures like pointing, or expressions, like smiling but within us seems to exist both an innate desire to communicate and the really rudimentary tools to start doing so, which rapidly evolve into a more complex and deeper understanding. At least that is what the case of Columbus illustrates, that in no time he thought he could understand that the captives that he took considered him as a divinity, and that they were communicating so to their countryfolk.

Again, this exchange is not exclusively done by humans, almost any social animal at some point interacts with other social communities of the same species, or even other species. There is a continuous flow of individuals who go from their group and integrate into another. However, the initial conversations are really limited, and no long-term cooperation is established between non-kin groups. Most interesting is the case of Bonobos. They are highly social creatures that communicate in a rich language. And this communication, at least for body language, goes beyond their own species and cultural groups. There is the observation that humans from Western culture understand most of their facial expressions and some of their natural hand gestures, such as their invitation to play. In the wild, bonobos have contextual messages; they use the same call to mean different things in different situations, and the other bonobos have to take the context into account when determining the meaning. This contextual communication was previously only observed in humans. Furthermore, it was studied that sounds made by human infants and bonobos when they were tickled followed a similar pattern. Also, Bonobos recognise, to a degree, that humans are ignorant and point them towards hidden objects. These behaviours probably indicate that the richness and depth of human communication goes far back in evolutionary terms, as humans and bonobo lineages diverged about 4 million years ago. But a much more distant social animal able to communicate are bees. A scouting bee is known to have really complex patterns of dancing and gestures to point to fellow bees in the bee colony where to find certain kinds of food. However, unlike humans, no bee has been seen that goes to another colony to tell the same thing, or that they might exploit together a certain area, or build a bigger nest in cooperation with another colony to fend off bad weather or predators. No, solutions to each of these problems have to be found within the colony, and no viable complex communication exists with external groups that we are aware of.

For non-human social animals, where an individual that migrates from one group to another, the newly arrived individuals adopt or conform to the traditions of the host group and do not return or communicate between groups. Or in the case of alpha males, they can impose their traditions. For example, experimenters trained wild vervet monkeys with corn of two different colours, one blue and the other pink (the researchers chose these because they were the colours of their genitals; that is how science is done). The blue and yellow popcorn tasted sweet or bitter, respectively, for half of the groups, and the other way around for the other half. They quickly learned to avoid the bitter taste with the respective colours. Four months later, after several baby monkeys had been born, the communities were again offered the coloured corn, although this time neither had the bitter taste. Then, both adults and infant monkeys strongly preferred the same colour as before, despite neither being bitter! This behaviour reminds to the rejection of food by humans when they are offered food with strange colours, but perfectly edible otherwise. The baby monkeys who had no previous exposure to the bitter taste, almost all of them just ate the same as the mothers. Interestingly, during that period, ten male monkeys migrated to a group that preferred the opposite colour as the one they were habituated. After observing the locals, nine out of ten shifted to the local preference of colour, giving up their habit. The only exception was that of a male that on arrival simply took the position as the dominant male upon arrival to the new group. This male continued his own habit, ignoring the locals and forcing his choice on the new group.

This experiment with monkeys can be similar to one conformity experiment done with humans. In a waiting room, an unsuspecting woman is surrounded by actors who rise up after a beep sound in the room. After 3 beeps, and seeing that every other person raises up after the beep, the woman rises up like the rest of them. Then, one by one, all the actors leave the room until only the unsuspecting woman remains. Even when she is alone, she keeps standing up after beeping. Then another unsuspecting man enters the room, and after seeing and talking with the woman rising up, he joins her. More and more people crowd in, and they keep adopting the odd behaviour after two or three beeps, with the exception of one male that took several more beeps to conform. Funny enough, as the repetitions happen, the movement of all of them becomes more coordinated, like a music band playing in synchrony. But there is no real communication in these cases, just examples of conformist adaptation. The members that entered the group would conform to whatever tradition was followed unless a new member took a position of dominance.

Whatever is happening with the monkeys and the popcorn seems to be similar to the humans and the waiting room. Some entrenched social learning mechanisms are taking the reigns of the individuals of each group to facilitate for the transmission of random cultural knowledge. This transmission is truly random in the case of these two experiments, but we can put the transmission in the context of an evolutionary pressure. For example, in the case of the monkeys, bitter taste is usually poisonous in nature, so colour → biter → poisonous; therefore, by keeping with the colour, one avoids the danger of poison even if the bitter is no longer there. But if one migrates to a new environment, it is better to follow the local norm, both to feel to fit in and because local differences might be different –when in Rome do as the Romans. The lone dominant male could go away with unchanging behaviour because truly the corn that he preferred was neither bitter nor poisonous. For the case of humans, it can be the same. Social conditioning might have evolved deeply, and it can be punished for not bending to the local norm, even if that contradicts the previous behaviour. That can relate to how people wearing clothes in a nudist beach feel uncomfortable and might be frowned upon by the nudists. Only people with a strong moral superiority would not conform and not care, like when colonists did not adapt their clothing to the places they were conquering but imposed theirs. While, exceptionally, western conquerors and explorers would “go native” if they were surrounded fully by the local culture.

A good example of adopting into the new group, or avoiding adaptation is the case of Gonzalo Guerrero and Gerónimo de Aguilar in the early stages of the conquest of Mexico. After a shipwreck, both where captured by the mayas in Yucatan amnd initially escaped together but got separated on their scape. Gonzalo Guerrero, after 20 days running through the jungle, arrived to a costal community were they made him became a slave. However soon after, after showing his skills as luthier, carpenter and his value in battle he assisted the Mayan lord Nachan Can’s as a general, fighting against other Maya groups and the Castilians. Gonzalo probably tattooed or marked his face and wore big earrings which changed the shape of his ears. He married one of Can Nachan’s daughters and fathered three euro-american children, probably the first mestizos. The story tells that he died at his 64 or 65 years fighting the Europeans, dressed, painted and ceremonially marked like the Mayas. In contrast, Gerónimo de Aguilar, was a seminarist, and never married or wed a native, but adopted local clothing and later despised European ones and partially forgot how to speak Castilian (spanish) after 7 years. He also became a warrior and a general for his later master Ahmay, who seemed to have second thoughts about sacrificing or killing him, but kept him alive and set him free because he valued his military skills. Aguilar, introducing European tactics like not capturing enemies alive, which where really useful in battles. However, unlike Guerrero, he later joined Hernan Cortés and assisted him in his conquests of Mexico, using his knowledge of the years living with the locals for that. He died covered in handicapping buboes as a soldier of the Castillians, making us wonder if these were syphilis buboes and he did wed somebody after he returned to the Europeans.

Previous

Exchange and Gift-Giving

Next

Exchange network stabilisation

Exchange and Gift-Giving

Posted on by wanderer

An amazing behaviour from non-human animals is way seems present giving to their carers. If you own a cat that roams freely outdoors, or know someone who does, you are likely familiar with the slightly unsettling “presents” they bring home. A variety of dead or half-dead creatures—perhaps a headless sparrow on the bed or a twitching cockroach on the pillow—serve as feline offerings. These gifts are likely given because the cat considers you part of its pack, reciprocating the security, shelter, and food you provide. Alternatively, they may be trying to teach you to hunt, much as wild cats do for their young. This is particularly evident among mother cats raising kittens. Similar behaviour can be observed in lions, where females bring back food for the pride’s alpha male, and mothers present cubs with small, disabled prey—sometimes even scorpions with their stingers removed—as part of the hunting learning process of the kitties. Interestingly, this behaviour is one of the few documented examples of “teaching” outside the human realm, a concept debated by researchers studying how learning takes place in humans and non-human animals.

Other animals also engage in gift-giving, though usually in the context of mating rituals. Some species of flies and spiders, for instance, present food or other items to potential partners. Returning to corvids, they have been observed offering gifts to human carers, often in the form of shiny objects. This is intriguing, considering that research suggests corvids are actually afraid of shiny objects. Despite this, the belief persists that magpies and crows are attracted to glistening objects. While corvids have been documented presenting “gifts” to other individuals in experimental settings, these events are rare and not actively pursued, leaving the true motivations behind this behaviour unclear.

Both corvids and non-human apes share remarkable cognitive abilities in problem-solving, tool-making, social interaction, and environmental manipulation. These parallels suggest that complex cognitive skills have evolved multiple times in distantly related species with vastly different brain structures. For example, corvids and parrots perform cognitively demanding tasks at levels comparable to primates, despite having much smaller brains. This suggests that brain connectivity, rather than sheer size, is key to developing advanced problem-solving skills. This apparent case of convergent evolution may indicate that similar social behaviours and strategies are necessary to tackle shared socio-ecological challenges. Yet, while these species follow different paths in tool-making and social learning, we have not yet identified non-human examples of the kind of collaboration seen in human societies.

One potential comparison lies in large-scale infrastructure projects undertaken by collective animal efforts. Social insects provide the most striking examples, constructing elaborate nests, bridges, and even cultivating fungi. However, such projects appear to function at the colony level, with no evidence of inter-colony collaboration. An exception to this rigid structure exists among Argentine fire ants, which freely exchange individuals between related colonies, blurring the lines between distinct social groups. Beyond insects, some social animals also engage in large-scale collaborative construction. Beavers build extensive dams, and sociable weaver birds in southern Africa construct massive communal nests, accommodating hundreds of nesting pairs. These nests feature interior chambers that retain warmth at night and outer compartments that remain cool during the scorching daytime in the Kalahari. However, such complex communal infrastructure has not been observed in corvids, parrots, or non-human apes, though chimpanzees and orangutans do create nests and rudimentary shelters.

What all these collaborative species share is a sophisticated communication system, mutual benefits from group cooperation, a degree of specialisation, and the development of unique strategies tied to their social and environmental contexts.

Humans, however, have taken this a step further. We extend our networks beyond our immediate group through exchange and gift-giving, forming connections that span vast distances. In these exchanges, context is crucial—where the perceived “usefulness” of an object is shaped by the specific environment in which it is found.

Imagine a prehistoric landscape on the East African coast, where groups of foragers live between the Great Lakes and the sea. It is easy to see how these groups would not have access to the same resources. Coastal communities would have abundant seashells and seafood, while those inland would rely on savannah, jungle, or mountain resources, hunting different game and collecting unique plant species. Lakeside groups would have plentiful fish but limited access to large seashells, which would be abundant on the coast. This variation in resources stretches across just 600 kilometres—from Lake Victoria to the sea. No single forager group would regularly traverse such a distance, but a chain of six or seven groups, each moving within a 50-kilometre radius, could establish a web of exchanges over time. Such interactions lay the foundation for trade, gift-giving, and the vast cultural networks that would come to define human societies.

Tool Making <- Previous Next -> Signalling

Tool-making

Posted on by wanderer

Tools can be seen as the means to a goal or goals. For example, a similar narrative to the shiny objects one can be constructed. Rare things were just objects to attract mates or facilitate social interaction. But obviously tools are also utensils that expand the range of resources in the environment accessible to a given individual. There are many examples of non-human animals using tools in their natural environments to widen their range of possible nutrient sources. One of the most studied behaviours is the use of stones or logs to crack nuts by non-human primates. We can perform the same exercise if we go to the countryside and see some freshly fallen nuts on the ground. Most likely, we will pick up a rock or a log and crack a few nuts for the pleasure of enjoying that small treat.

More sophisticated strategies for using tools also exist that can not be thought as tools in a strict sense, like fixed elements of an environment. And also more intelligent. I once saw a monkey in Colombia opening a coconut by hitting it against a large tree branch. I can honestly say that I could not have opened the coconut by replicating its technique, nor could I have devised the technique myself, even if I put my mind to it. For those unfamiliar with a fresh coconut, it has an inner hard shell, the same type we see in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. However, it is encased in a fibrous layer, about six inches thick, covered by a thin, smooth outer layer that is difficult to break. If you simply hit the coconut with a rock or throw it to the ground, the fibres absorb the impact, making it frustratingly difficult to access the inner part. Instead of a rock, the macaque had a neat and efficient opening process. It was a complex sequence: hitting the coconut against a large tree branch while standing on it, then rotating the coconut to remove the outer smooth layer and fibres until it had a convenient handle. Then it could crack the hard shell against the tree branch. This was a sophisticated process requiring knowledge, skill, and technique—one I have never seen a human use to open a coconut, and i counted almost about a dozen different ways of doing it on my travels.

Many other sequential, complex examples of tool use exist. In the case of birds, it has been observed that New Caledonian crows can create long-reaching tools out of short, combinable parts—connecting different short sticks to form longer ones that allow them to access food in a puzzle box. Interestingly, in that experiment, as we have seen, only one of the eight crows, called Mango, was able to piece together four or more short sticks. Therefore, intelligence is not evenly distributed among all individuals of the corvid family. Other great apes, including humans, can also use complex tools, especially to extract insects from holes and colonies.

More intriguingly, the other crows did not learn from Mango to apply his technique. His innovation, stemming from his superior intelligence, benefited only himself—perhaps allowing him to gather more food, gain a reproductive advantage, and produce more descendants who might inherit his heightened cognitive abilities. Consequently, knowledge acquired through innovation is retained only indirectly, as a genetic change—a process that occurs very slowly.

Despite their impressive tool use, neither non-human apes, birds, nor any other known species have made the cognitive leap to trading, exchanging objects or knowledge, or gifting them away. Each time a chimpanzee wants to eat ants, it must create an elaborate brush. There is no brush-making chimpanzee who exchanges their higher-than-average ability for food, grooming, or social status. Nor does Mango the crow trade his long tool with less skilled crows. There is no market or ceremony among non-human species where goods, tools, or knowledge are exchanged or given freely.

We will see that more sophisticated behaviour is needed, connectivity will allow the increased complexity of tools.

Rarity and Curiosity <- Previous Next -> Exchange and gift-giving

Rarity and curiosity

Posted on by wanderer

Let us first focus on rarity, which is conceptually easier to grasp. For some reason, we are extremely attracted to rarity. Imagine this thought experiment: there is a room full of white marbles on the floor, with just one or two red marbles, and you are allowed to pick three of them. Which ones would you choose? I can venture to say that you would probably pick the red ones.

Now, consider another room where another person is also allowed to pick just three marbles. However, in this room, the colours are inverted—one or two are white marbles, while the rest are red. Neither of you knows about the inverted arrangement.

Once both of you exit the room, you are allowed to see what the other has picked.

If there were only two red marbles in the room, you would have one or two red marbles and the rest white. Meanwhile, you would see that the other person also has one or two red marbles.

If you were now allowed to exchange marbles, which ones would you pick? The context has changed—both of you have more or less the same number of red and white marbles, but most likely, due to your previous experience, the other person would desire your white marbles while you would desire their red ones.

Other strategies might emerge, though. For example, given the possible rarity and imbalance of colours, you might choose to hold on to one white marble just in case.

This simple thought experiment illustrates how complex rarity becomes. Despite this, we have an innate mechanism that drives us to desire it. Marbles are completely useless in everyday life, and their being white or red makes no actual difference. There is no rational thought behind it—only the impulse to gather the rare.

We do not know where the desire for rarity comes from or how exclusive it is to humans. Perhaps the behaviour originates from selecting ripe fruit. However, similar curiosity and rarity-seeking behaviour can be observed in bowerbirds. These birds, native to Papua and Northern Australia, have no natural predators. Like birds of paradise, male bowerbirds have evolved complex courtship strategies. While birds of paradise have developed colourful feathers and elaborate courtship dances over generations, the plain-looking bowerbird has instead developed the ability to construct intricate and colourful structures—so-called “courting nests”—as part of its courtship strategy.

Males take years (four to seven) to learn how to build these structures, which can span several metres. These nests take weeks to construct using sticks, straws, shiny stones, and pebbles. Interestingly, bowerbirds have begun incorporating plastic rubbish into their nests. Each element is carefully arranged in complex structures that even manipulate depth perception, much like a Baroque painting, in order to attract a mate—or several. In many of these structures, a plastic piece—often an especially unattractive one, such as a torn energy bar wrapper or a crushed plastic bottle—occupies a central position. Perhaps this is not due to intrinsic beauty, but rather because of contextual rarity. Curiously, these birds also follow local trends, observing and copying the constructions of others. Young bowerbirds learn by imitating their older relatives, initially building crude and atypically coloured nests. This behaviour is particularly evident in species such as the Satin, Vogelkop (Amblyornis inornatus), MacGregor’s, and Great Bowerbirds.

Perhaps we desire marbles for the same reason—they are shiny, rare objects that can be used to attract potential mates or simply to gain the attention of our social peers. A child, for instance, may wish to show off a rare new toy to their family and friends or flaunt a shiny new pair of shoes.

Regardless of the underlying reasons, what bowerbirds lack is a system of exchange in which they can trade their surplus of blue plastic caps for an impressive white-and-green toothbrush two nests away. Instead, they resort to stealing decorations from their neighbours in an effort to attract mates. However, stealing is time-consuming and inefficient; the thief must wait until the other bird is away, sneak in, and then return to their nest with the prize. During this period, they are neither gathering food nor tending to their nest, and they are also vulnerable to theft themselves. It is far more efficient to exchange ornaments or to give them away in the hope of reciprocity—or, as some anthropologists suggest, to create a debt bond.

Beyond the intriguing fact that modern plastics have entered their courtship rituals, bowerbirds offer insight into a fundamental human desire: the pursuit of beauty taken to an extreme, combined with the imperative to reproduce. This will be analysed further in the texts.

From the small to the global <- Previous Next -> Tool making

Curiosity and rarity, from the small to the global

Posted on by wanderer

In the previous chapter, we established that humans are remarkable communicators, with the roots of language deeply wired into our brains and our methods of processing information. We share aspects of this nature with other animals, such as songbirds. There are also limitations within human communities, where individuals or groups have difficulty creating communication channels at a deep level due to differences in processing information—whether because of the brain’s wiring or due to cultural or professional distance. However, what makes us clearly distinct in the realm of communication from anything else that we know is that we seek to communicate as much as possible with our surroundings—even with our dogs, plants, and everyday objects. Children talk to their toys, and I have even seen my flatmate talk to his kombucha jar. Communication appears to be a universal need for humans, to the extent that it seems boundless within human communities. As mentioned, one human community would not only converse internally but would most likely also engage with its neighbours, with multiculturalism inbuilt in who we are.

The history of humanity is not plagued by conflict but by collaboration. As we have seen with the Palaeolithic trading networks—which spanned hundreds of kilometres—rare minerals, tools, shells or bones (what remains in the archaeological record) were found far away from their natural sources. These remains are much further afield and more widespread across the territory than what a human community would likely have been able to travel and carry with them.

The most likely explanation for that archaeological record is that exchange networks emerged through trading, whereby some communities exchanged goods with their neighbours. This exchange would have involved the same goods passing from hand to hand repeatedly until they reached distant places, across tens of pairs of hands.

This trading is not a minor matter; it involves a series of complex cognitive abilities, as well as the will and means to exchange information with neighbours who may have almost no connection to the community where the goods originated. First, one must understand the value and rarity of the materials to be exchanged. Their value might arise primarily from their rarity or usefulness. These are not simple concepts in themselves—rarity and usefulness are deeply contextual. One might combine these concepts under the term “desirability”, but that is an even more complex notion.

In the following texts, we will see how, from these small seeds, it is possible to reach Global communication and it is almost inevitable as proficiency in mutual understanding emerges, consolidates and improves over time.

Forms of communication <- Previous Next -> Rarity and curiosity

Forms of communication

Posted on by wanderer

Let us briefly explore the main forms of communication that humans tend to use before examining global communication.

Visual/Symbolic Communication

One of the most basic and almost universal forms of communication is visual communication. At some point between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago, humans across the lands they occupied began extensively using pictorial representations to depict the world around them. Even if we cannot understand the language or all the characteristics of the cultures that lived during the Ice Age in the Altamira caves, when we look at the drawings there, we can easily identify what they were trying to represent—impressive buffaloes, as well as various other animals like horses and deer, along with dancing human figures.

It remains a mystery why figurative art in the Homo lineage became dominant worldwide at that time and not earlier. Anatomically modern humans—the term palaeontologists use to describe human remains that resemble us, i.e., Homo sapiens—have existed for approximately 200,000 to 300,000 years. This increase in the use of visual communication may be the result of a gradual accumulation of increasingly complex cultural traits that allowed for more sophisticated pictorial art. Alternatively, our perception may be biased due to a limited sample size and poor preservation of earlier examples of figurative painting. Regardless of the reason, figurative art now appears to be a universal human trait, present in almost all individuals from an early age.

Human infants can identify familiar objects such as a house, a horse, a person, or even smiling and sad faces from a very young age. Moreover, children begin creating geometric figures by the age of two and produce rough paintings of figures by the age of three. By the age of five, their drawings evolve into more standardised and symbolic images.

This symbolic representation in images also appears to be a universal mode of communication among humans. Simple pictorial forms can be used to identify common animals and objects found all over the world. However, some people in cultures unfamiliar with photography struggle to recognise an animal from a picture and require a specific body part to make the identification.

You may have relied on visual communication yourself when travelling to a foreign land where you could not speak the language. In such situations, you might have used gestures to figuratively describe an action or object or even resorted to crude drawings to communicate your needs. However, this form of cross-cultural visual communication has its limitations. I encountered these limitations when I wanted to cross a river in Papua but could not find a bridge. I asked the locals for directions, but despite my best efforts, they could not understand me. Using my hands and gestures, I tried to depict a river and a bridge over it. I then resorted to drawing it in the sand with a stick, using mimics and pointing towards the river, which was not far away. Finally, a combination of all these methods did the trick. I was swiftly guided to a path through the jungle that I would not have found on my own, even if I had searched for days. At the end of the path—after crossing several streams via wooden logs used as makeshift, slippery bridges—I reached the other side of a hanging bridge, with the river rushing 50 metres below me.

Acoustic Communication

Another form of communication that appears to be universal among humans—and likely many non-human animals—is auditory signalling. For example, a high-pitched, loud scream would generally startle you and make you wary of its source. Moreover, if the sound persists—such as the crying of an infant mammal—you might instinctively try to stop it by feeding, warming, or comforting the creature in any way possible. It is not difficult to imagine that we have an inbuilt genetic predisposition to associate certain sounds with specific actions or emotional reactions.

Another largely human—but possibly primate—auditory signal is laughter. All human cultures seem to associate enjoyment and fun with laughter and its characteristic sounds.

Additionally, the intensity and duration of sounds tend to convey universal messages. Loud sounds generally indicate aggression, whereas quieter ones suggest closeness and attentiveness. Similarly, short, abrupt sounds are used to grab attention, while long, howling sounds are often associated with connection and emotional expression.

Language <- Previous Next -> Curiosity and rarity, from the small to the global

Language

Posted on by wanderer

The most critical basis for communication is language. It is difficult to define what a language is and what it entails. At its core, language is something that can capture deeply complex concepts—both external and internal—and transform them into words with specific meanings that can be shared with others. Therefore, it entails both an internal component, in which the brain must link specific concepts to words and structures of the language, and an external component, in which these words and concepts must be translated into structures that can be broadcast to other individuals. These broadcasts can primarily be via sound, visuals, or touch, but in principle, any channel capable of encoding information should work in order to create structured signals in the form of a language.

There is no clear agreement on how old human languages are. Some argue that they started emerging about 100,000 years ago, while others argue for an even earlier origin. Nevertheless, however they came to be, languages are an integral part of being human, shaping both how our brains function and how we understand and influence the world and ourselves.

Some examples illustrate how wired we are to shape our brains for learning a language. The clearest natural experiment demonstrating the spontaneous learning and generation of languages is that of Nicaraguan Sign Language.

In the 1980s, for the first time in Nicaragua, a school for deaf children was created, bringing together children from all over the country to live and learn in one place. Before this initiative, there was no institutionalised system to teach deaf children how to communicate. As a result, at the time of their arrival, these children’s vocabulary was limited to a few hand gestures used within their families or communities of origin, often in the form of idiolects or cryptophasia (“private languages” usually spoken by one person or between twins).

Compounding this initial lack of complex communication, the teachers at the new school aimed to teach the children lip-reading and Spanish through that method. They discouraged the use of any sign language, believing that the children would put less effort into learning to lip-read. However, lip-reading had very limited success—the children were unable to communicate with their teachers.

Despite this, communication flourished outside the classroom among the children themselves. In the courtyard and throughout their daily activities, they combined the hand gestures and signs from their respective communities and created new ones. This process of creation, sharing, and accumulation spontaneously generated a new language, which rapidly evolved into more complex structures, giving rise to grammar and a more elaborate vocabulary. This increase in complexity and fluency was particularly evident among younger generations of students, who picked up the signs from older peers and refined them with intricate flourishes and added layers of meaning.

This entire process was documented by sign language experts, who were called by the teachers after noticing that the children could communicate fluently with one another but remained incomprehensible to the teachers. Initially, these experts also struggled to understand the children, but by filming them, analysing the footage, and interacting with them using the learned hand gestures, they gradually acquired the language. Most interestingly, over the years, they recorded the cumulative process of increasing complexity, allowing us to witness how the language evolved and standardised rapidly.

Notably, the children were already familiar with a small subset of home signs. However, this is not so different from the basic signs shared by social animals or those we can teach our pets. For example, when I was living in Mallorca, I was responsible for a dog named Gordon. I could tell him “sit,” and he would sit; “down,” and he would lie down; “up,” and he would stand on his hind legs; “la pateta,” and he would sit and give me his left paw. Even more complex instructions, like “We are going for a walk, but first, we need to go to the basement,” were followed correctly—Gordon would go straight to the basement instead of heading directly outside. Not only that, but he also communicated with me: for instance, he would touch his water bowl to indicate it was empty or stand patiently by the courtyard door when he wanted me to open it. Through these examples, one might say that he and I shared basic communication and understanding, but no one would, in their wildest dreams, call that a language. Nor would a language ever emerge from these exchanges. This became especially clear when I said more complex things, like “Could you go to the cupboard, open the door, and bring me a kilogram of rice, please?” or “Do not bark at the neighbour’s dogs!” Gordon could open doors, so that part wasn’t a problem, but the rest was beyond his capabilities.

The case of Nicaraguan Sign Language is particularly important because it demonstrates the evolutionary nature of language within a short time frame and its ability to keep expanding—something that does not occur in any other non-human animal. To be fair, dogs can be trained in more complex ways than my simple set of commands (and one particular, named Chaser, learned can more than 1000 words!), and other animals, such as dolphins, elephants, circus animals, horses, buffaloes, parrots, pigeons, and crows, can learn to respond to basic commands from their human carers. Bonobos, in particular, can learn up to hundreds of hand gestures to communicate basic information with their trainers, and similarly, dolphins can understand basic sentence order. However, this is the maximum extent of their communication; it does not go any further. Nor do animals copy human language to communicate among themselves in more complex ways—not even parrots, which can mimic hundreds of human sounds, spontaneously start using them to communicate with each other. Humans, on the other hand, have the unique capacity to transform simple signals into an elaborate and constantly evolving set of communication codifications.

The connection between language and the brain is deeply rooted in humans, with both being intricately linked, as seen in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Language shapes the brain, and the brain, in turn, shapes language. The latter is evidenced by the fact that certain sounds seem to be more naturally associated with certain concepts—for instance, sharp objects are commonly linked to words with sharper sounds, while round objects tend to be described using softer pronunciations across multiple languages. Language is integral to memory, abstract thinking, and, fascinatingly, self-awareness. Language has been shown to drive much of the brain’s core “hardware”. Languages shape brains to such an extent that, most of the time, we think in a language—or in multiple languages if we are multilingual.

For those who are born deaf, rather than relying on an “inner voice” as spoken-language users do, their thought processes are shaped by visual sign thinking or the sensation of body gestures. Interestingly, deafness has a significantly greater impact on the brain than blindness. People born completely deaf and who never learn sign language fare only slightly better than the rare individuals who grow up without any language exposure. Without language, they fail to develop an “inner voice”, which is crucial for the brain’s ability to process information. This is especially significant in early childhood. Those who are not taught sign language until later in life often have learning problems throughout their lives. It seems that the brain processes sign language exactly as it does spoken language, using the exact same regions.

Communication - Culture <- Previous Next -> Forms of communication

Growth of communication- Culture

Posted on by wanderer

All of the previous examples I have highlighted until now, show living beings collaborating and cooperating require a basic feature: communication. Communication involves shared channels in which the individuals that form a group or interaction have cues and signals that can be understood by other members and entities. These are mainly visual, chemical, acoustical, and vibrational cues. With these cues, the basic structure of formations larger than the individual exists, allowing for the generation of other ways of interacting with the environment that individuals alone cannot achieve.

Out of the three bases of global reach (intelligence, collaboration, and communication), I will focus on communication as the most critical for our understanding of how we got here—that is, the capacity to communicate at many and diverse levels and across a wide range of scales. From really superficial to deeply technical ones, from proximity to global.

At some point in this arrangement, a complex cognitive structure emerged in the form of language. This sophisticated communication would encompass most forms of categorising the external and internal world of individuals in any group united by communication. Many debates concerning the limits of knowledge originate from analysing where our knowledge of the world around us is constrained by language. These debates span back centuries, for example G. Berkeley’s, A Treatise on Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) or J. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), or take really interesting forms, like the Sapir-Whorf effect, where language might shape the essence of how we see our world. For example, many languages do not have words for numbers larger than 3 or 4, but might have hundreds of words for different scents, which we lack.

In any case, at some point language was used not only for the communication between members of in-groups, but also with external groups, becoming a federation of groups, as anthropological research shows. That is where everything really changed, where “Culture” emerged in the sophisticated form that we know and where information, collaboration, exchange, reduction of conflict and complex networks would extend the wealth of possibilities of how interact and shape our environment. This level of inter-group communication is something that has not been achieved successfully by any other living thing on this planet —maybe with the exception of the Fire Ants, and they are a only doing it for the last 100 years or so. As humans, we achieved the creation of a structure —culture— which allows detailed communication between virtually all the members of our species.

Once communication between groups emerges, everything changes. This accumulative communication allows for the complexity of the tools we use to be open-ended, as the evolution of technology and tools like large particle accelerators or space satellite constellations shows.

Communication is also open-ended, meaning that it can potentially keep increasing indefinitely, probably linked to the complexity of tools. In nature, communication channels tend to be very limited and do not show growth or evolution by themselves, while human languages are always in continuous evolution—incorporating new concepts and terms, combining existing ones, losing or forgetting others, and actually forging what is needed. This applies not only to language but also to symbols, signs, experiences, training, repetitions, etc. This indefinite addition of communication elements adapts to achieve the desired level of communication, understanding, and sharing of the initial information. To put it simply, to pass on a specific message. This depth of communication also requires boundless collaboration to construct the complex concepts needed for sophisticated knowledge.

All in all, this open-ended way of sharing messages has created what we have come to know as culture and cultural evolution—the body of messaging and knowledge that is passed from one generation to another, with the capacity to add new pieces to that pool or lose them. Moreover, we have, in principle, the limitless capacity to transmit accumulated knowledge and messages to other human beings, as long as there is a shared communication channel.

Collaboration <- Previous Next -> Language

Collaboration

Posted on by wanderer

Another important behaviour that humans share with many animals is socialisation and collaborative action. This is observed across a wide range of species, including not just animals but also organisms from other biological kingdoms. There are many examples of this collaborative behaviour.

Cetaceans (whales, killer whales, porpoises, and dolphins) engage in social collaboration to achieve common goals, such as developing feeding strategies and defending against aggressors. A species that is particularly close to us in terms of social behaviour is the wolf. Wolves form small packs of up to forty individuals, working together for survival. Their domesticated relatives, dogs, are also highly social animals capable of interacting with many other species, especially humans, to a remarkably sophisticated degree. This is exemplified by cases where humans have been effectively adopted by dogs, such as in the myth of Romulus and Remus—the legendary founders of Rome—or in more recent historical accounts like that of Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja. Marcos lived among wolves for 11 years after his father sold him to a landowner who entrusted him to a goat-keeper, who later died. Marcos recounted:

“One day I went into a wolf den to play with some puppies that lived there and fell asleep. When I woke up, the wolf mother was cutting deer meat for her puppies. I tried to take a piece from her because I was also hungry, and she swiped at me. When she finished feeding her puppies, she looked at me and threw me a piece of meat. I didn’t want to touch it because I thought she was going to attack me, but she kept bringing it closer with her snout. I picked it up, ate it, and then she came up to me. I thought she was going to bite me, but instead, she stuck out her tongue and started licking me. After that, I was already part of the family. We went everywhere together.”

Marcos also recalled that after reuniting with his father, his father simply asked him for the old jacket he had left behind.

If we extend the concept of collaboration further to include infrastructure, we see that insects and arachnids also exhibit highly cooperative behavior, forming vast colonies. However, these types of social structures are not exclusive to invertebrates; similar cooperative infrastructure-building can be observed in birds, beavers, and many mammals that create dens. In the case of insects, some colonies function almost as single superorganisms, with specialized individuals performing specific tasks or switching between roles as needed. Other social animals, such as meerkats, also have fluctuating specialized roles within their groups, such as caring for the young or standing guard to raise alarms against predators.

For social arachnids, as well as some bird species and most den-dwelling animals, collaboration seems to be primarily focused on building communal nesting or feeding structures. However, outside of these specific activities, they tend to act as individuals.

On the looser end of social structures, we find schools of fish and herds of various land animals. These groups function as dynamic, collective entities where decisions about feeding, protection, and movement are made communally.

Expanding the concept of socialization even further, we can consider co-dependent ecosystems. In such ecosystems, plants and animals—or even plants with other plants, bacteria, and fungi—are so interdependent that they cannot be considered separate entities. Biologists refer to these relationships as symbiotic or, in cases where one organism is significantly larger than the others, as holobionts. A common example of a holobiont is the relationship between a human and their gut bacteria, whereas an example of symbiosis is lichen, which is formed by the mutualistic association between fungi and algae.

The scale of communication and collaboration in most living organisms is usually limited. For example, some ant species form supercolonies containing trillions of individuals, such as the Argentinian fire ant supercolony (Linepithema humile). These supercolonies cooperate with genetically related colonies while competing with unrelated ones, allowing them to dominate newly colonized lands by leveraging globalization. However, despite their vast numbers, their communication networks remain limited to neighboring colonies and do not extend much further.

In contrast, human collaboration is, in principle, boundless. Even in the Palaeolithic era, commercial networks facilitated the exchange of materials over vast distances—hundreds or even thousands of kilometers— with materials transported almost 200kms at least as early as 45,000 years ago. This scale of mobility far exceeded that of individual bands and their immediate neighbours. No other species exhibits such an extensive range of cooperative behaviour.

Even among our closest extinct relatives, there is uncertainty regarding the extent of their social networks. Recent genetic research has shown that a group of Neanderthals remained genetically isolated from neighboring groups—less than a ten-day walk away—for more than 50,000 years. However, this genetic isolation is not unique to Neanderthals. Studies suggest that modern humans, too, have lived in genetic isolation from neighboring communities for tens of thousands of years. For instance, the ancestors of African Pygmy foragers are believed to have diverged from other human populations around 60,000 years ago, though they intermixed more recently in several occasions.

Intelligence <- Previous Next -> Communication

Intelligence

Posted on by wanderer

Starting with behavior that can be understood as intelligent, we can focus on tools. These were already present in the Homo lineage and are also shared with many other species on this planet. We can understand tools as macroscopic external elements of an animal’s body that are used to gain access to more resources, security, and reproductive success. More conceptually, tools can also be strategies to achieve the same objectives without the use of any specific external object, other than perhaps geography.

The use of tools can be both learned and innate and is abundant in the animal kingdom. Examples of tool use range from primates using stones and branches to crack nuts or open coconuts, to birds creating complex fishing utensils with their beaks and claws, especially in the family of Corvidae (ravens and crows) and psittacines (parrots). Dolphins, for instance, use the shore or each other to trap their prey.

But tool use can extend far beyond what we would usually consider “intelligence.” For example, creating nests and structures to attract females (as seen in bowerbirds), ants using sticks to build bridges or using fungus to ferment food, chickens eating rocks to aid digestion, hermit crabs using shells and plastic cups, caterpillars using leaves to make cocoons, foxes building dens, and beavers building dams. One could consider these behaviors as simply “innate” tool uses. However, there is ample literature arguing that the “social learning” of animals, whether innate or learned, is difficult to define and differentiate. Although instances of problem-solving behavior spreading have been observed, such as parrots opening trash bins in Australia.

Interestingly, the spontaneous use of tools—using environmental elements for one’s own benefit—is probably widespread in the animal world. Individuals of many species use tools in controlled lab environments, where they can solve complex puzzles using elements of the system. For example, pigs can play video games, rats solve mazes, and squirrels solve puzzles.

However, despite the shared use of tools among many animal species, we are fundamentally different. This shows that “intelligence,” in the case of humans, might be necessary but not sufficient to explain why we are the way we are. The key difference is culture. Many of the previous examples of animal innovation do not constitute culture. This is because the discoveries of one individual are often not explained or described to fellow individuals of the same species. In the case of puzzle-solving and tool-making, each individual must solve the problem themselves initially, which is an inefficient way of obtaining resources. Not all individuals of the same species show the same dexterity in solving the same puzzles, as we will see in more detail with the case of Mango the crow.

There are examples, though, of chimpanzees who learn from imitating fellow chimps or human instructors on how to open a complex box to obtain food or learn sign language. However, when imitation experiments have been conducted with both chimps and humans, it has been observed that humans tend to repeat every step of the process, even futile ones that do not contribute to obtaining the reward, this seems to be in the contest of our brains being wired for costly rituals, even at a young age. On the other hand, chimps, once they learn which steps are necessary, tend to avoid the unnecessary steps. This indicates that chimps are actually more efficient in problem-solving than humans, avoiding unnecessary steps. However, it also points to the fact that humans are better at copying than our closest relatives, to the point that, even understanding the mechanics of something, we keep extra steps for the sake of reproducibility. Although some dispute these conclusions.

Opening <- Previous Next -> Collaboration