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Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

(www.newscientist.com)
189 points docmechanic | 12 comments | 07 Apr 25 15:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.459s | source | bottom
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mattdeboard ◴[11 Apr 25 17:26 UTC] No.43656266[source]▶
Reinforcing my strongly held belief that what fundamentally sets humans apart isn't spoken language, or tools, or any of that, but rather the fact we write down what we know, then make those writings available to future generations to build on. We're a species distinguished from all others by our information-archival and -dissemination practices. We're an archivist species, a librarian species. Homo archivum. In my opinion.
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1. contrarian1234 ◴[11 Apr 25 19:00 UTC] No.43657255[source]▶
By that metric Native Americans are basically animals.. which is problematic.

However arguably humans existed from tens of thousands of years and only really started to make huge technological leaps when writing existed. Prewriting culture is still quite fascinating and complex (ex: Homer or Olmec/Maya art) but it does seem to be stuck at a certain level.

I think Egyptian civilization provides a fascinating mid point where there is writing but it's not very accessible... And Egyptian civilization is slow to develop (it's also very weird they don't have their equivalent of Homer or Gilgamesh)

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2. igravious ◴[11 Apr 25 19:04 UTC] No.43657301[source]▶
> (it's also very weird they don't have their equivalent of Homer or Gilgamesh)

i'm not sure if this is the case or not but if it is lack of evidence may not be evidence of a lack! they may have done and it may have not been transmitted to us

3. glenstein ◴[11 Apr 25 19:36 UTC] No.43657632[source]▶
>By that metric Native Americans are basically animals..

The Cherokee had an extremely well developed written tradition, so I don't think that inference would follow at all.

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4. earleybird ◴[11 Apr 25 20:08 UTC] No.43657975[source]▶
From the early 1800's, created by a single person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary

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5. mattdeboard ◴[11 Apr 25 20:57 UTC] No.43658476[source]▶
Cave drawings throughout the American southwest demonstrate Native Americans of antiquity were just as capable of expressing symbolic thought via a durable medium to express meaning to other humans as so-called modern humans.

I know I'm arguably moving the goalposts here from "writing stuff down for others to read" to "using symbols on a durable medium to express meaning to other humans." But that's a category of behavior that writing belongs to so I don't think it's logically inconsistent. :)

6. mattdeboard ◴[11 Apr 25 20:59 UTC] No.43658502{3}[source]▶
Awesome. A truly impressive feat that, among all the various and sundry species populating the earth, is only achievable by a human. That is exactly my point... thank you! :)
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7. bobthepanda ◴[11 Apr 25 21:15 UTC] No.43658684[source]▶
I don't think this really holds. we know, for example, that there were precolombian civilizations that wrote things down like the Maya and the Aztec, though much of it was destroyed during colonization.
8. PaulDavisThe1st ◴[12 Apr 25 00:34 UTC] No.43660217{4}[source]▶
But also not a part of the human experience among all the ancestors of the Cherokee people, or more or less all humans in the Americas, all the way back to whenever humans first arrived in the Americas (likely 25k-30k years ago, at least).
9. PaulDavisThe1st ◴[12 Apr 25 00:38 UTC] No.43660244[source]▶
There are dozens (maybe even hundreds) of human cultures that existed at the time Homer was writing, or when Gilgamesh was written, that also have no equivalent.

The idea that any roughly equivalent human culture will develop the same things is clearly wrong. Just look at the plough - for centuries or even millenia, humans outside of what is now China had ploughs but failed to gain the insight to improve it in the way it was improved in China. Once trade exposed them to the Chinese plough, it was more or less universally adopted within decades.

While multiple (re)invention may be common, it is not universal. Just because culture A manages to find is way to cultural/technological innovation doesn't imply that culture B will, even if the two cultures are very similar.

10. fsckboy ◴[12 Apr 25 03:21 UTC] No.43661056[source]▶
>By that metric Native Americans are basically animals.. which is problematic.

just as it's not problematic to discover that bonobos talk to each other like Shakespeare, it would not be problematic to discover that humans are animals. keep your fingers off the scales (and, to mix a metaphor) let the scales fall from your eyes: it's science, follow the evidence to the truth. Don't be guided by what you want to hear, in either direction.

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11. Dylan16807 ◴[13 Apr 25 05:21 UTC] No.43670285[source]▶
You're using a different definition of animal to be contrary. Don't do that.

And "problematic" here means it's racist in a dumb and obviously incorrect manner. We already have plenty of evidence against that idea.

12. afiori ◴[13 Apr 25 06:47 UTC] No.43670631[source]▶
Native Americans had rich oral traditions that would have served the same purpose