The most surprising information I found in the videos this week was regarding the use of symbols in apes.  In the first Video they described the A group of apes communicating that they wished to groom one another by performing a ritual which appears to hold no other function than to convey meaning.  What I am wondering is to what sort of meaning is this ritual conveying? Is it fully meaning? Are they using symbols or signs? Was it deploying universalized concepts, such as a concept of self or grooming?  Was the meaning conveyed via a set of functions whose symbols are understood by the apes to be variable – in the sense that when we say cow, we know that “cow” is not tied to the concept of a cow, but rather is an arbitrary linguistic device that could have just as easily been “caw,” or “woc.” 

We wish to say that their ritual means something like “I would like to groom you.”  If they are employing functions, like humans do in symbol use, then the aspect of the symbol which refers to“groom” should be able to be used to describe anyone grooming anyone.  If the meaning of the entire ritual is set, and cannot be broken down into constituent parts, then it seems to be more like a sign. A stop sign has no grammar – it attempts to evoke responses in another via a single association of “this = that.”  

Apes may be like us, for Hellen Kellar, before being taught words, for initially all she communicated by was signs and pantomime.  This could imply with enough cultural advancement in apes, they too could reach a point where they use symbols, if they are not already there.

I think apes can further our understanding of our own biology, behavior, and culture by comparing them to us now, and using them as a close representation of what we once were.  We often most clearly know what we are when we can see what we are not. Since apes have so much in common with us, yet also differences – may it be a lacking ability or an added ability – we can more clearly imagine what it means to have or lack some ability while having a large portion of our abilities intact. Where we see behavioral similarities between us and apes, we may posit that such behaviors are biologically determined, and are less arbitrary determined by our specific, cultural  formation. As for culture, we can begin to see how our hunter gatherer societies formed out of the cultural activities that we find in apes that hunt. Apes serve as an artificial window into our past, one which allows us to imagine what we came from, while also allowing us to more clearly envision the diverging paths our ancestors took to create the Species housed within the class of Hominoids. By seeing this divergence between apes and Humans, we can describe the progression of biological traits that we acquired and lost, imagine the cultural progression that took place, and imagine how our behavior was shaped as we spread across the world.