As humans, we share about 96 percent of DNA with primates. In this week’s lectures and videos, we learn the similarities we have with non-human primates as well as how non-human primates provide information on evolution. In the first lecture, it talks about how non-human primates have similar features. We share a similar skeleton, vision, and behavior. However, it continued to evolve to what modern humans are today.
I found the article from Slate called “ What Is War Good for? Ask a Chimpanzee.” to be most surprising to me. The article talks about how various species of primates have this “warfare” trait amongst them. It was discovered that both humans and primates inherited a “warfare” trait from a common ancestor from seven million years ago. Scientist came to the conclusion that violence was part of human nature and in our DNA. Scientist believe that this sort of violence comes from the fission-fusion social systems. The group members are not around each other all the time, they tend to break into smaller groups to satisfy the need for the group. Females will leave once they come of age. However, males stay in the group. This causes them to have stronger bonds amongst each other. As they break into smaller groups, they go out in the wild to forge. In a new territory, they might encounter a smaller group. This gives opportunity for the larger group to have a successful assault on the smaller group they encountered and gain a balance of power. This results in a gain of possible new territories, power, new resources, and new mates. I found this surprising, because this sort of violence can be seen in humans to a certain extent. For example, many males are protective over their significant other. When a person flirts with their significant other, they could use verbal violence or physical violence to let the person know that they are not available. This makes me think deeper about how humans and non-human primates share a common ancestor, and how evolution plays a part of this “warfare” trait that is stamped into our DNA.
There seems to be a pattern with each lecture and video that was provided for this week. We as humans share many similarities with non-human primates, and this provides us with information on evolution. Studying non-human primates can help us better understand our own behavior, biology, and culture. With a better understanding of non-human primates, we can begin to learn how or why different characteristics have evolved to modern day humans. We learn about how our brains, skeleton, vision, and behavior are similar to those of non-human primates. Different social and environmental factors cause the continuous evolution of humans. I believe once you have the greater understanding of non-human primates, we can begin to understand why we behave a certain way, what is my culture, and why am I biologically the way I am. In conclusion, anthropology gave me a different outlook on evolution and similarities we have with non-human primates.
Hi Sophia! I loved your post! I also found the Wayman article about Chimpanzee war very interesting! I was also shocked at how similar their behavioral patterns were to human behavior. I think that point about how humans can be territorial, similar to the chimpanzees, is very interesting. Even though their territoriality can be handled in different ways (humans may have more emotional responses to a person flirting with their significant other, while the non-human primates exhibit violent responses), that aspect of territoriality is still present. I agree that this brings up a lot of questions regarding how evolution could have led to us evolving in completely different ways. I am very curious as to what other types of things we can trace back to our common ancestor, and what other things we have that are similar to non-human primates.
Hello Sophia! Great blog post, I really enjoyed reading it!
I enjoyed how you started off with a statistic, I also found that number to relatively higher than I thought before this section. Another piece of information I was surprised by was when you mentioned: “When a person flirts with their significant other, they could use verbal violence or physical violence to let the person know that they are not available.” What is really interesting to me is how animals and humans all interact in such different ways. Even different groups of Chimpanzees can have various “flirting” techniques.
Another thing I found in your post and when reading this section was how by studying non-primates, this helps us understand our similarities, differences and evolution.
You talked about how many patterns that you found throughout the articles, I am curious to see if you didn’t agree with any components in the article or you found significant differences among topics? I think this would be interesting to see another side.
Thank you!
Allie
Hi Sophia, I also found the article really interesting for similar reasons as your own. It was really engaging to make parallels between chimpanzee and human behavior as well as the motives such as being territorial aggression and food resources. I agree that this addresses evolutionary divergence based on species and I wonder what other traits and tendencies we share with our non-human primate ancestors. I hope follow pu on this topic in the future. Additionally, I appreciate your inclusion of outside information to really make your point. Though sharing DNA is intuitive, I don’t think people connect the traditional behavior of the development of our current society by studying our non-human primate counterparts. Overall, I really enjoyed your post and thought you put a lot of effort into it!