Trafford Publishing: The Dawn of Human Behavior

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The Dawn of Human Behavior

by Gerald A. Doyle

311 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0654; ISBN 1-4120-0285-0; US$27.50, C$31.95, EUR23.00, £16.00

How did early man behave? An examination of the fossil remains of early man and the artefacts found with these remains, as well as a consideration of the behavior of our closest living relatives, the great apes, tell us a great deal.

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About the Book

For many decades the paleontological and paleoanthropological communities have speculated about the behavior of the fossil hominids they have unearthed. Using the artefacts found with these remains, they have been able to piece together a reasonably speculative picture of how early man behaved. Aided by an examination of how our closest relatives, the great apes, behave, this book is an attempt to put all this information together.

We get a relatively clear picture about such things as ambulatory behavior from the fossil remains themselves and manipulative behavior from the structure of the hands and the artefacts found in association with the fossil remains. Tools, animal bones and evidence of the construction of shelters also tell us something about social behavior. The behavior of the great apes provide further clues. consideration of the linguistic abilities of early man are highly speculative but detailed examination of the structure of the jaw, neck and brain cases, together with a consideration of his social and intellectual behavior provide thought-provoking clues. No other publication deals so comprehensively with the behavior of the early hominids.

About the Author

Educated in South African and the United States, the author recently retired as Professor of Comparative Psychology from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, after more than 30 years of teaching. The author's previous publications in the form of scientific articles, book chapters and edited books have all been concerned with the behavior of the lower primates. The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, being the epicenter of the scientific study of the early hominids, the author has had a career-long interest in their behavior.

Excerpt

WHO WERE THE EARLY HOMINIDS?
The human story began with a crossing long, long ago of a somewhat fuzzy borderline when something like an ape became something like a human being, an event which ... made no great splash at the time leaving no outstanding traces in the fossil record. It was followed by stretches of sheer monotony, almost empty eons of gradual change.
John E. Pfeiffer, 1982

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Some scientists have speculated that, but for the mysterious disappearance of the dinosaurs ± 65 million years ago, some dinosaurs might have evolved into intelligent and dominant life forms, in which case the great apes and humans might never have evolved. The late Carl Sagan, of the University of Wisconsin, noted that one particular dinosaur species, little more than half the size of an ostrich, had a relatively large brain, was probably warm-blooded, walked bipedally and had four-fingered hands with opposable digits. To Matt Cartmill, of Duke University, "the origin of humanity from ape-like primates is not as mysterious as is the failure of other apes to become human".

Jane Lancaster, of the University of New Mexico, makes the point that in considering the behavior of the early hominids we have to use our imaginations and realize that there is no modern analogue for the adaptive system with which we are dealing. This adaptive system had its own unique features but it must at least have had some features in common with modern humans and perhaps even more with the living great apes. However slowly it was changing all the time, it was never static. It must have changed so slowly that over many hundreds of generations it was more or less constant but it must have been successful for early man to have survived.

Scientists have argued for decades and are still not in agreement about what defines Homo sapiens. One long-standing definition of man is that of Jean Baptiste Lamarck who suggested, in his PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE in 1809, that bipedalism is the feature that defines mankind. A much later definition by Kenneth Oakley of the Natural History Museum, London, in1957, is that of "man the tool-maker", a definition which can be traced back to 1778 when Benjamin Franklin described man as "a tool-making animal". These definitions recognize the importance of behavior in evolution and presuppose the evolution of certain behavioral trends, not only manual behavior and brain expansion but also social behavior and speech.

Were all the fossil hominids and their extinct antecedents, going back perhaps 7.0 million years, extant today and available for study we would almost certainly be able to agree with Charles Darwin that human behavior represents an expansion of capacities already present in our animal ancestors. The discontinuity-continuity debate would be laid to rest and we would be hard put, if not totally unable, to point to a particular time or species and say "this is where humanity began". But our early ancestors are not available for study; there are enormous gaps in the fossil record and an enormous gap in the extant record. We can speculate and draw inferences from the available data, the scanty fossil record, the archeological record and extant species of great apes and humans. In this essay, as is the custom, the term 'hominid' is extended to include all the known early fossil species which the taxonomists include in the Hominoidea - the family of man - such as the Australopithecines. As Alan Walker, of Pennsylvania State University, and Robert Foley, of Cambridge University, and many others have stressed, there is no dichotomy between humans and nonhumans, from Australopithecus to Homo, but a continuum of evolutionary experiments. A missing link is an artificial construct.

The behavioral evolution of early man is one of the most interesting lines of human enquiry. But it is one of the most difficult to study. Direct behavioral evidence of evolution from the distant past is almost entirely lacking for the simple reason that, while hard anatomy like bones and teeth fossilize, soft anatomy, such as internal organs, muscles and the nervous system, does not. Still less does behavior fossilize. But fossils do provide evidence of behavior such as fossilized animal tracks, burrows and footprints, animals fossilized in the act of copulation, giving birth and animal fossils with the fossilized remains of other animals in their stomachs. Of great importance, particularly with regard to the behavior of early man, are teeth. Teeth are the most durable parts of anatomy and may survive with little change for millions of years. To the paleoanthropologist they are like fingerprints. From a single tooth it may be possible for a specialist to determine an animal's species, sex, age, size and even the shape of its jaw, as well as what it habitually ate.

Those who study hominid behavior in the past must rely almost solely on circumstantial evidence often far removed from the facts. Circumstantial evidence falls into five categories:

The anatomy of the fossil hominids;
Artifacts and food found in association with hominid remains;
The evolutionary records of other animals found in association with hominid remains;
Records of climate and ecological change;
Comparisons of modern humans with those of our closest living relatives, the great apes.

Altogether they still fall far short of providing an accurate picture of the behavior of early man. Gaps in our knowledge can only be filled in by inference and intelligent speculation.

In looking back to our origins we must be at least as interested in the general behavior, the social behavior, cognitive capacity, and communicative ability of our early ancestors as in their physical appearance. Bear in mind that the fossil remains themselves are seldom sufficient to allow complete reconstruction of skeletal anatomy and even less so for the reconstruction of behavior. In contrast with our ignorance of hominid behavior scientists are slowly but surely learning more and more about its context. Geological, paleontological, climatological and palynological (palynology is the science of recognizing ancient plants from fossil pollen which helps in determining the plants and fossils used in dating geological formations and archeological remains) research enable scientists to speak with increasing confidence about the setting of early hominid life. As hominid fossils continue to mount in number scientists are getting increasingly more accurate and complete information about the appearance and physical capabilities of the early hominids.

Charles Darwin himself recognized that the major problem in applying the theory of evolution to humans lay in the realm of behavior. In THE EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS IN MAN AND ANIMALS Darwin dealt with what was essentially functional anatomy, the relationship between anatomy and behavior. Facial expressions are intricately related to the facial muscles and facial expressions are in turn related to feelings and emotions invariably emitted in a social context. Robert Foley notes, in line with Darwin, that in principle all elements of behavior are subject to natural selection and could therefore evolve. Foley notes that Darwin, in THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX, extended the theory that natural selection operates through differential rates of reproduction for different individuals in the context of competition for scarce resources. Competition between males for females and between females for males is quite independent of competition for other resources such as food. By focusing on competition for mates, rather than on the struggle for survival, Darwin showed that natural selection operated under all conditions including the social context. Darwin made it clear that natural selection was concerned not only with morphological characteristics but behavior as well. He also believed that, like morphological characteristics, behavior was on a continuum with that of other animals. Behavior has as much an evolutionary history as does morphology and it must have responded to changing circumstances through time as we readily assume structure to have done. It is possible to attempt a speculative analysis of the social organization of a particular species, including early man, in relation to its known environment, provided that sufficient and appropriate evidence has been preserved in the fossil record as well as in the paleontological record.

However, the evolution from early hominids to modern man is characterized more by changes in behavior than by changes in anatomy. Some anatomical, morphological and physiological changes which have occurred in the evolutionary development of mankind since divergence from the last common ancestor, but which are not visible in the fossil record, are:

Changes in skin and glands;
Reduction in body hair;
Continuous sexual receptivity of the female;
Aspects of reorganization of the brain not determinable from endocasts (rubber latex casts of the insides of skulls which reveal the contours of the brain);
Modification of the vocal tract.

Some behavioral changes that cannot be inferred directly from the fossil and archeological records are:

Language;
Control of displays of emotions;
Greatly increased social cooperation and the division of labor;
Great increase in social bonding mechanisms - reciprocation, marriage, kinship;
Great increases in symbolism.

Behavioral evidence from the fossil record, unlike morphological evidence, cannot be inferred with any high degree of certainty. Inferences as to behavior can be based on the morphology of fossils and by analogy with living animals, such as, for example, feeding habits and locomotion, which constitute first-order behaviors. All the habitual and possible movements of a bird may be inferred from its fossilized skeleton and these movements are the elements from which the bird's total behavior may be compounded. But it is quite impossible to infer the complicated movements that constitute a courtship display, an example of second-order behavior. The evolution of first-order behaviors is interesting and important and there are many good examples in the fossil record, such as the evolution of locomotion in the horse, but the evolution of second-order behavior is even more interesting and important.

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