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-- Your Worldview?? (Poll)
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Coincidentally ...
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Chimpanzee culture 'confirmed' By Helen Briggs BBC News science reporter Tool use in wild chimpanzees. Image: David Bygott. Primate experts say they have proven that chimpanzees, like humans, show social conformity. By training captive chimps to use tools in different ways, they have shown experimentally that primates develop cultural traditions through imitation. This has long been suspected from observations in the wild, but has not been shown directly. It suggests that culture has ancient origins, scientists write in Nature. The study was carried out by a team at the University of St Andrews in the UK and the National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, US. They presented two different groups of chimps with a problem relevant to their wild cousins: how to retrieve an item of food stuck behind a blockage in a system of tubes. One chimpanzee from each group was secretly taught a novel way to solve the problem. Ericka was taught how to use a stick to lift the blockage up so that the food fell out. Another female chimp, Georgia, was shown how to poke at the blockage so that the ball of food rolled out of the back of the pipes. Each chimp was then reunited with its group, and the scientists watched how they behaved. They found that the chimps gathered around Ericka or Georgia and soon copied their behaviour. By the end of two months, the two different groups were still using their own way of getting at the food and two distinct cultural traditions had been established. "This is the first time that any scientist has experimentally created two different traditions in any primate," Professor Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews told the BBC News website. "Moreover it is the first time anyone has ever done this with tool use in any animal." Ancient origins The research adds weight to decades of field studies on wild primates suggesting that they have rich cultural traditions unmatched in species other than our own. Chimpanzees in West Africa, for example, use stones and pieces of wood to crack open nuts for food; but this has never been observed in chimps living in East Africa. It suggests that the common ancestor of chimps and humans, living some four to six million years ago, probably also had a desire to conform - the hallmark of human culture. "If both species have elements of culture, it is highly likely the ancient ancestor had too," said co-author Dr Victoria Horner, "so culture probably has a deep-rooted ancient origin." The research is published in the online edition of the journal Nature. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4166756.stm |
bahhh, must i reply to all of you!!
Re: Your Worldview?? (Poll)
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| Originally posted by ::TranceVanDyk:: Naturalist - Atheist |
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| Originally posted by ::TranceVanDyk:: bahhh, must i reply to all of you!! |
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| Originally posted by occrider No word yet on whether Kansians exhibit cultural behaviour. |
My favorite Discovery Institute has come out with a list of 10 questions to ask biology teachers. Well the following author has countered with a list of similar questions to ask your history teacher. I think they are completely fair and worth asking:
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=21
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| Ten Questions to Ask Your History Teacher Q: ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENTS: Why do history textbooks claim that the modern British monarchy originated with the "Norman conquest" in "1066" when nobody has ever seen a calendar for that year, and there has never been an English king named "Norman"? Q: WASHINGTON'S BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT: Why don't textbooks discuss the "Civil War" or the fact that all US governmental bodies appear together at that time, instead of branching from a Constitution - thus contradicting revolutionary theory? Q: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: Why do history textbooks claim that the "Revolutionary War" started with a "Declaration of Independence" and quote its words, then claim that a suspiciously old-looking document in Washington D.C is the same document because it contains the same words, - a circular argument masquerading as historical evidence? Q: GEORGE WASHINGTON. It is well known that the infamous "cherry tree" story was faked, and that "George Washington" never said "I cannot tell a lie", - that is, if he ever existed. Why do textbooks use drawings or "artist's conceptions" of "George Washington" as evidence that he existed? Why does no single history textbook anywhere point out that there are no photographs - zero! - of "George Washington" in existence? Q: ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Why do some history textbooks give Alexander Hamilton's year of birth as 1755, and others as 1757? Why do historians refuse to discuss, or even acknowledge, the controversy? Why do many textbooks even claim that this (probably imaginary) figure was killed in a duel with "Aaron Burr"? Take out a $10 bill and see whose picture is on it. Do you think this duel actually occurred, and that the US then decided to put the loser's picture on its currency? Q: WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE. Why do history textbooks all use the same picture of "Washington Crossing the Delaware" when historians have been aware for years that the picture was staged? Any idiot knows that you can't get ten guys in a canoe without capsizing, and "Washington" is standing up? Get real. Q: SILLY HATS. Why do textbooks claim that Revolutionary Fashion can explain the use of Tricorner Hats by the colonists, even though these hats were not used in the French Revolution, and there are no such silly hats anywhere else in history? Q: REVOLUTIONARY WAR. Why do textbooks represent the Revolutionary War as having been won through a series of "small victories" when, every time you look at an actual battle the colonists fought against the British, as likely as not they got their asses handed to them? Do you think a nation as magnificently complex as the United States could come about through a random, undirected sequence of military engagements? Q: GOVERNMENTAL ORIGINS. Why are artists' drawings of a bunch of middle-aged guys in poofy wigs used to justify Revolutionary claims that we are all descended from a parcel of ninnies who didn't have the sense to be at the beach in July, when historians cannot even agree on who they were or what their actual hair looked like? Q: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that the American Revolution is an historical fact, even though many Revolutionary claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts? And remember - when some liberal revolutionist starts spouting off about imaginary events supposed to have taken place in 1776, all you have to do is look him in the eye and ask, "Were you there?" |
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