Yakoob on 8/3/2016 at 00:32
For some reason this makes me think its a viral marketing for some crappy upcoming horror flick :| probably just the forest and lighting reminding me of Blair Witch...
Vivian on 8/3/2016 at 08:29
Ha, when I was studying archaeology the lecturers told us that attributing early human artefacts to 'ritual' was a semi-in-jokey way to say 'I Haven't Got A Fucking Clue What This Is'. This sounds like it might be similar.
hopper on 8/3/2016 at 08:49
Quote:
Chimpanzees in West Africa have been spotted banging and throwing rocks against trees and throwing them into gaps inside, leading to piles of rocks. Those rocks do not appear to be for any functional purpose and might be an example of an early version of slam dunking.
CASE SOLVED
Purgator on 8/3/2016 at 10:48
It could be a weapons testing facility for Chimps. Maybe they're trying to determine which shape/size rocks cause the most damage and are stockpiling them.
Kolya on 8/3/2016 at 19:56
Clearly this shows that chimps believe in god. Not gods. Or stockpiling rocks. Don't fall for that.
faetal on 8/3/2016 at 20:09
Maybe it's just fun to get the rocks in the holes. Why can't it be that?
Nicker on 9/3/2016 at 04:00
Maybe it's pure research. There must be apes who aren't beholden to producing marketable results for the chimpdustrial complex.
demagogue on 9/3/2016 at 04:36
Well if we're going to speculate... so chimps, or most non-human primates FTM, are notoriously hard to teach because they don't get non-instrumental instructions easily, or more generally, they don't get methods linking to some abstract end not directly present in the situation, like a pretty direct utility payoff. But they'll do things that gratify themselves and have some pretty direct visceral payoff, including learned practices, like swinging their legs or bodies from a branch ostensibly just for the pure gratification of feeling their legs swing.
So with this rock throwing shit, ideally you'd want to say they get some kind of visceral gratification from it, like the way the arm feels swinging to make the right arc that hits the tree or into the crack (a rush not unfamiliar to humans too that we also inherited), one of those gratifications that's not immediately obvious, but after a chimp has seen it done the first time, the gratification clicks. That kind of story can explain why other chimp groups don't do it, but it can still get established in one community (not unlike the ant-grabby-stick-tool practice).
Because if it's not that kind of story, I think you're in trouble coming up with a story that fits with chimp behavior and MO. What's the payoff? And without such a direct payoff, what's the MO?
As for ritual... Uh, can ritual even exist without language? There's nothing out of it you can turn into a predication that carries some kind of semantic meaning as we know it. At best there's direct reference, like alert barks ("Oh Shit bear!"), but referents by themselves do not a ritual make. Some of the first ritualistic behavior we know from humans that there's physical evidence for are things like flowers in burial sites, clipping rocks like animal heads, and shells covered in ochre (shell necklaces for women covering themselves in ochre), where there really needs to be a property predicated to a referent (an X for a Y) or you have a problem getting there.
bjack on 9/3/2016 at 05:40
Tossing rocks and beating on wood is a long standing primate tradition. Duh!
