Customs and cultures in animals and humans
Neurobiological and evolutionary considerations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2401540 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kathleen R Gibson (University of Texas-Houston, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 323-339 |
| Publication date | 2002-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropological Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1463-4996 • E-ISSN: 1741-2641 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1463499602002003803 |
| OpenAlex | W2010205849 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 24 |
Anthropologists have long considered culture to be a defining attribute of humanity. Over the last decade, however, primatologists have repeatedly asserted that great apes also possess culture. Whether or not great apes or other animals pass the `culture test' depends on how one defines culture. This article uses the terms `custom' and `symbolic culture' to distinguish socially transmitted behavioral patterns and symbolic systems of belief, each of which is sometimes called culture. Information presented here indicates that social customs are widespread among mammals. It remains questionable, however, whether any non-human animals possess symbolic cultures. Symbolism, teaching, imitation, speech, and gesture demand brain-size mediated neurological capacities possessed by few non-human species. These include fine motor skills and the ability to construct variable, complex motor acts, concepts, and objects from multiple components. Humans exceed all other animals in these mental constructional skills and, hence, in many abilities that rely upon them including language, making complex tools, art, dance, mime, teaching and imitation. These interacting capacities enhance our social learning abilities and also allow us to create and transmit symbolic systems of belief. Symbolic cultures, thus, may be creations of social beings equipped with prerequisite motor and mental capacities, and they may reflect activities of multiple neurological areas as opposed to being a discrete human trait mediated by a specific, genetically-determined neural module. To the extent that symbolic cultures are creations, all mental capacities essential for culture may have been present in ancestral humans prior to the appearance of actual evidence of culture in the archaeological record
Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Construct (python library · Gesture · Imitation · Sociology · The Symbolic · Action Observation and Synchronization · Child and Animal Learning Development · Computer Science · Primate Behavior and Ecology · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence
An introduction to anthropology
Primate societies
Tools, language, and cognition in human evolution
Chimpanzee Material Culture
Dating and Context of Three Middle Stone Age Sites with Bone Points in the Upper Semliki Valley, Zaire
Cultures in chimpanzees
Newly-acquired pre-cultural behavior of the natural troop of Japanese monkeys on Koshima islet
Is There Teaching in Nonhuman Animals?
Learning by imitation
On The Language Instinct
The Thinking ApeEvolutionary Origins of Intelligence
The Concept of Culture
The archeology of modern human origins
Evolution of the human capacity
Tools, Language and Intelligence
Evidence for a Social Custom in Wild Chimpanzees
Behavioral Differences between Archaic and Modern Humans in the Levantine Mousterian
Intergroup Differences in a Social Custom of Wild Chimpanzees
| Citations per year | 0.18 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2009 - 2020 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |