Re: Jane Goodall notes



claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Mar 11, 7:31 pm, "caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx"
<caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Saw Jane Goodall speak last Saturday night in Washington DC to a group
of educators, mostly about her program called Roots and Shoots.

I find her to be sweet, humble, smart. A great lady & all women
scientists owe her some gratitude.

Her speech was grand. Impassioned. Entertaining. Touching.
Factual. It is probably somewhat of a "canned" speech, but so what?
I had not heard it yet....

I took notes. I only have one line that is a direct quote, but here
goes:

Her mother was with her in the first 4 months of her work in Gombi, in
1960. Louis Leakey helped get her started, and the both of them were
considered "crazy" at the time to send a woman off into the forest on
her own.

she saw chimps buiding nests in groups and on their own.

Dinosaurs and birds build nests. So this is no great revelation.

She (of
course... all of us in sap know this) saw chimps using tools....

Lots of animals use tools in one respect or another. It's silly to
suggest that chimpanzee tool usage tells us anything about how chimps
evolved in to humans.

even
stripping the leaves off twigs & to use that twig to fish out
termites. This observation revolutionized our place in nature.... we
were at that time defined as humans at least in part by our ability to
use tools.

chimps have a whole series of gestures, and use them in the same
way(s) that humans do.

Chimps have their first child at about 13 years old, and then another
one every 5 or 6 years. The bond between the mother and child gets
even stronger after the younger sibling is born. A long childhood is
important to social learning -- like us -- and a young chimpanzee will
pay careful attention to to the behaviour of an adult IF he is
interested in the behaviour.

"our brain has had an explosion." .... what caused our explosion?
She thinks it is
"this sophisticated language."

She's largely correct about this. It's our ability to conceptualize
and understand the long-term value of resources so that we can work in
concert to maintain these resources and survive the dry season and its
very dramatic predatory/competitive factors.


Our ability to have abstract thought and form thoughts about
thoughts - meta language. I would throw in the ability to
count and then think abstractly about counting (the foundation
of math). This ability to think abstractly at several different
levels allowed us to 'see our using an object' vs 'just using
an object' and with that the notion of a 'tool for a purpose'
developed bringing on technology.

These skills have selected over time for a more complex neurology, but its
just the beginning. (We can soon build
machines to think in more complex ways than our neurology
can. We are in a race with evolution but that in istelf is evolutionary).

Goodall opened the door formally to something that
ordianry people had known about informally for thousands
of years, since chimps cannot speak for themselves or tap
you on the shoulder and say: "Hey moron! ..................".

Its lovely.

..





.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: skinny runners
    ... Humans can walk AND run. ... >> Savanna chimps are still chimps - not humans. ... Study shows humans have ability to track odors, ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: A critique of the BBC aquatic ape programme and the transcript.
    ... You can't say that chimps generally can't swim if 1 can. ... So, can you say, *generally* that humans can swim ... > develop a latent swimming ability that it would normally not develop. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Capacity for literacy
    ... was only because they had to invent the concept of reading from ... neanderthals were capable or any pre-neanderthals? ... Since you don't know when the ability to read arrived, ... Yes chimps can learn signs, but "to a degree" was not the question, ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Jane Goodall notes
    ... all of us in sap know this) saw chimps using tools.... ... evolved in to humans. ... Our ability to have abstract thought and form thoughts about ... We can imagine ourselves within a huge solar system within a huge ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Capacity for literacy
    ... was only because they had to invent the concept of reading from ... neanderthals were capable or any pre-neanderthals? ... Since you don't know when the ability to read arrived, ... Yes chimps can learn signs, but "to a degree" was not the question, ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)