This document discusses how apes and New World monkeys can provide insights into the origins of human culture, technology, and knowledge management. It suggests that: 1) Environmental pressures like climate change forced early hominins out of forests onto the savanna, requiring new adaptations like cooperative hunting and tool use to survive. 2) Chimpanzees and bonobos demonstrate intelligent tool use and social cooperation, suggesting our last common ancestor had similar capacities. 3) Capuchin monkeys in some environments independently evolved sophisticated nut-cracking industries using stone hammers and anvils, showing convergent cognitive evolution. 4) Capuchins' problem-solving abilities and cultural transmission of tool

1. Monkey Business
—
What apes and New World monkeys tell us
about the origins of human culture, technology
and knowledge management
William P. Hall
President
Kororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters
Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.org
william-hall@bigpond.com
http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net
Melbourne Emergence Meetup 11/09/2013
Access my research papers from Google Citations
Access book project from Dropbox
Attribution
CC BY

2. Context
 Topic results from my professional
interests from evolutionary biology to
organizational knowledge management
 What circumstances and processes in the
evolution of humans have led to the
emergence of human intelligence, social
organization and a technological capacity to
accumulate and manage cultural knowledge?
 Is this a rare, one-off event or is the
emergence of self-conscious intelligence
potentially repeatable?
2

3. Summary
 Concepts
– What it means to be human
– Intelligence
– Social organization
– Technology
– Knowledge and culture
 Knowledge
 Knowledge sharing
 Knowledge management
 Biological approach: – what do our near
relatives and distant cousins tell us about the
probability of human intelligence arising
 Discussion and extrapolation3

4. Some concepts

5. Characterizing the human species
 Social
– Individuals depend for their survival on social and economic
connections with other people
– Social systems structured at several levels of organization
– Organizations function as economic species
 Based on living knowledge
– Individual knowledge
– Cultural knowledge
– Organizational knowledge
 Technological
– “Tools” extend & enhance organic capabilities to interact with
the external world
– Essentially all individual interactions with the natural world
are now technologically mediated5

6. Social organization
 Social refers to the interactions of
individuals with one another
– Power & control
– Economic & resource exchange
– Sex, reproduction & family
– Knowledge & information exchange
 Organization
– Systems structured from repeated social
interactions of individuals over a period of time
– Organizations are entities in their own rights
– Organizational entities also interact as individuals
with one another6

7. Intelligence and knowledge
 Intelligence is the capacity to solve problems
of life
 Karl Popper’s evolutionary theory of knowledge
– Knowledge is solutions to problems
– Knowledge is constructed by solving the problems
of life
– Knowledge grows by eliminating errors
 Life cannot continue without having solutions
to the problems of life
7

8. Technology
 Tools
– Extend bodily capabilities
– Extend cognitive capabilities
– Extend capabilities & capacity for social interaction
 The post-primate individual
– Tools for the individual give the animal human
capabilities
 The post-human individual
– The human and the human’s tools are the individual
 What do tools for social interaction provide?
8

9. Tools + culture make humans
 Comparative approach
 Who else uses tools
– Some birds (crows, Galapagos finches, bower birds)
– Monkeys (capuchin monkeys)
– Apes
 In what contexts
– Personal comfort & grooming
– Shelter
– Foraging & feeding
– Display & communication
– Defence against predation
9

10. Knowledge and culture
 Individual learning vs sharing knowledge
culturally
 Knowledge essential to individual, group and
cultural survival
 Is the emergence of socio-technical
organization a chance event or is it a
predictable consequence of complex life?
10

11. How did apes come
to conquer the
world?
—
Hypothesis: An
expulsion from
Eden

12. Apes in the primeval forest
(Adam and Eva in the Paradise Brueghel & Rubens - 1615)
 Life was easy
– Our ancestors could
subsist on fruits of the
forest
– Available water
– Sleep in tree nests12

13. Plate tectonics turned Eden into Hell
 Spreading in Great Rift Valley
– Lowered floor
– Raised mountains
on either
side
– Mountains
block rain
 Climate
deterioration
– Drier
– More variable
– Forests  thorn scrub13

14. The expulsion from the garden of Eden
 Our direct ancestors were caught in a crack in the earth some 10-
5 million years ago leading to climate deterioration
– Formation of the
East African Rift
– Mountain building
on each side of
the rift blocks
rain from east and
west.
– Floor of the rift
increasingly arid
 Grassy woodland
 Thorn scrub
 Savanna
– Adapting to a hard
life by developing
extractive foraging
14

15. The dry and thorny cradle of mankind – it’s not Eden
15
Envisat

16. Finding enough food to make a living
 Optimizing dietary quantity and quality
 Modes of acquisition/foraging
– Random picking (if it looks, smells, & tastes good, eat it)
– Targeted picking (know what is in season and where to find it)
– Extractive picking (know where edibles hide & how to extract them)
– Tool assisted extraction & processing (find & make inedible edible)
 Probing & spearing to extend the reach
 Shovelling to reach into the ground
 Pounding to break and smash
 Tearing and cutting to improve access
 Heating & drying to make more manipulable
 Cooking to alter chemistry
 Planting and husbandry
 Storage, transportation, & distribution
– Putting things together to make complex tools and processes
 Extending cognition
– Mapping the territory
– Imagining where food might be hidden & how to access it
– Retaining & sharing know how
– Increase cognitive capacity to manage more/more complex knowledge16

17.  Forest-dwelling chimpanzee-human last common
ancestor (CLCA)
– Primarily frugivorous with some tool-based extractive foraging
– Fission-fusion social structure, some transfer of cultural knowledge
– High selfishness, limited cooperation in defense and hunting
 Savanna apes as extractive foragers & scavengers
– Edible plant resources more widely scattered and harder to find
– New kinds of resources needed
 Roots, tubers and nuts
 Meats
– New dangers
 Big cats
 Hyenas
 Wild dogs
 Selection pressures
– Imagine where food might be hidden
– Retain & transfer cultural knowledge
– Increase memory & cognitive capacity
Climatic deterioration in E African Rift Valley expelled forest
apes (our ancestors) from the Garden of Eden ~5 mya
17
(Tattersall 2012)

18. Hominins using haak en steek branches as tools (Guthrie 2007): a. for driving big cats away from their prey. b. The
simple conversion of a thorn branch into a "megathorn" lance for active hunting.
Cooperative defense and scavenging of carnivore kills cached in trees
gave early hominins increased access to meat on the savanna
 Savanna offers limited resource of edible plant foods but a rich supply
of grass-eating herbivore meat (most food found on the ground)
 Chimpanzee social defence against leopards is uncoordinated mobbing
with clubs
- Might deter leopard from returning to tree cache
- Not a pride of lions or mob of hyenas on ground
 Simple requisites for grade shift to aggressive scavenging on the ground
– Coordinated & cooperative defense and offense using effective deterrence
– Oldowan butchering tools for cutting skin & ligaments
18

19. Cognitive advances enable grade shifting revolutions in cultural
and organizational cognition
 Accelerating change in extending human cognition
– > 5 million years ago – social defence  cooperative foraging &
hunting  knowledge-based autopoietic groups
– ~ 2.0 mya - linguistically coordinated activities around campfires to
share group knowledge (mime, dancing, singing, story-telling, myth,
ritual)
– ~ 200 thousand years ago – mnemonic songlines apply ritual &
method of loci to landscapes to build & retain cultural memories
– ~ 12 kya – mnemonic guilds & monumental architectures enable
husbandry, settlement, farming & economic specialization
– ~ 7 kya – tokens & writing enable bureaucratic cities & states
– ~ 600 years ago – communications, coordination & rise of chartered
companies
– ~ 100 ya – instant communication & rise of transnationals
– ~ Now – emergence of global brains & global cognition
19

20. 20
Knowledge-based revolutions in material technology cause grade
shifts in the ecological nature of the human species
 Accelerating change in our material technologies:
– > 5 million years ago - Tool Making: sticks and stone tools plus
fire (~ 1 mya) extend human reach, diet and digestion
– ~ 11 thousand years ago - Agricultural Revolution: Ropes and
digging implements control and manage non–human organic
metabolism
– ~ 560 years ago Printing enables Reformation & Scientific
Revolution
– ~ 2.5 ca - Industrial Revolution: extends/replaces human and
animal muscle power with inorganic mechanical power
– ~ 50 years ago - Microelectronics Revolution: extends human
cognitive capabilities with computers
– ~ 5 years ago - Cyborg Revolution: convergence of human and
machine cognition with smartphones (today) and neural
prosthetics (tomorrow)

21. What “caused”
apes to conquer
the world?
—
Facts

22. Our primate family tree
 Our ancestors were frugivorous tree-dwellers
 To our family, the Garden of Eden is a forest
22
Source

23. Cercopithecidae
Old World Monkeys
Hylobatidae
Small apes
Gorillini
Ponginae
Hominina
(Hominins)
Hominini
(Hominines)
Panina
Apes – our close cousins
23
 Fossils + genomics tells us
a lot about relationships to
other primates
 Comparative biology suggests
how differences may have
evolved
After Locke et al. 2011

24. Chimpanzees and bonobos suggest that our common
ancestor was a smart tool user
24
Videos
from
Bossou
Making thick and thin probes to fish for ants Clubs and a thrown rock deter/kill a leopard
Chimps learn hammer and anvil Breaking into a beehive
click picture
for video
click picture
for video
click picture
for video

25. Other chimp tools
25
 Types
– Spears – used to kill & extract small mammalian
prey hiding in tree holes
– Digging sticks – used to harvest roots & tubers
– Mashers – large pestles used to mash hearts of
palm trees
– Sponges – used to extract drinking water from tree
holes
 Cultural and ecological distribution
– Culturally transmitted knowledge: tools used vary by
location from none to many
– Savanna chimpanzees have most extensive tool kits

26.  Intelligence
– Mechanical: chimps show
capacity to make & use
a variety of tools
– Social: show significant
tolerance & can
cooperate on tasks
– Linguistic: both
 learn more than 250
word lexigrams
 use in 2-3 word phrases
 Bonobos don’t use tools in the wild – but it is clear
that they could if they needed to!
– Kanzi is one smart ape! – watch extraordinary documentary
– Natural history – Nova – the last great ape
Bonobos and chimps in the lab
26
click picture
for video

27. Repeating the
experiment in a
New World
—
Was the emergence of human
cognition a chance event or is
it an expected outcome of
normal evolutionary processes?

28. Repeating the experiment in a New World
28
~ 40 mya
 The common ancestor of primates in both worlds ran
along the interconnected highways of the tree canopy
– Small sized omnivore, with grasping hands & feet
– Ready supply of fruits, flowers, grubs & succulent leaves
– Avoids the predators of ground and air

29. Introducing smart monkeys from the New World
 Many people see capuchins as smart pets
– Size of a house cat!
– Life-span 40-45 years
29
Detail from "Students encounter an organ-grinder monkey on campus with
man holding Times-Picayune box, Rice University," 1960. Rice University,
http://hdl.handle.net/1911/77137
click picture
for video

30. Another expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Brueghel & Rubens knew them in 1615
30

31. Will the real capuchin stand up!
 A knowledgable capuchin prepares its own meal using a
very heavy stone hammer and a log as an anvil (see
other video for the full sequence behind the picture)
31
click picture
for video

32. Just how smart are capuchins?
 Clip documented by a series of publications by Westergaard and
colleagues from 1987-2007 independently repeated by other labs
32
click picture
for video

33. The capuchin’s knowledge-based nut-cracking industry
33
6. select suitably dry nut(s)
7. transport nuts to anvil site
8. place nut in suitable anvil pit
9. strike nut with hammer to crack
(60-70 blows may be required!!)
10. eat nut & possibly share with young
scroungers learning the process
 Steps in the industrial process
1. Select ripe nut
2. Peel
3. Dry in sun for several days
4. Select appropriate anvil site
5. Find & transport suitable
hammer stone(s) to anvil site
click picture
for video

34. Other technologies reported in the scientific
literature
 Capuchins in primeval forests not seen to use tools
 Tool uses seen in various cultures
– Defensive:
 Bombarding jaguars and people with rocks and boulders from
cliff-tops
 Bashing snakes with sticks (too small to fight off leopards)
– Hunting: spearing lizards & small mammals in holes with sharp
sticks
– Mining: using stone picks to extract more suitable stone from
hillsides
– Cultivating: using stones and sticks as hoes and shovels to dig
up edible roots & tubers
– Communication: females in oestrous throw stones towards
desirable males to attract attention
 Different groups use different tools34

35. Platyrrhine ancestor colonized New World 30-40 mya
 Could raft across narrower Atlantic in 1-2 weeks
 Hystricomorph rodents colonized around same time35

36. Genetic proliferation in & after last glaciation
36
Sapajus
Atlantic forest
Cebus
Amazonia
6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 0.0 now

37. Forging a hard life in a barren landscape
37
Amazonia
Thorn scrub
Atlantic forest
 Caatinga and Cerrado
 Short rainy seasons (~ 2 months)
 Hot almost entirely rainless dry seasons
 Thorn scrubs and savanna

38. Adversity is the mother of intelligence and invention
 Encephalization quotients of some primtes
Sapajus

39. Carrying two nuts and a hammer to an anvil site
Semi-terrestrial capuchins are being selected for
bipedalism
39
click picture
for video

40. Could these monkeys rule the world with human grade
cognition if it were not for humans?
 Encephalization quotient equivalent to
hominins ~ 4-3 mya
 May have less symbolic and mechanical
intelligence than chimps/bonobos
 No ape other than humans shows as much
understanding of its tools or manages as
complex an industrial process as do Sapajus
 Clear evidence for cultural sharing and
transmission of sophisticated survival
knowledge
40

41. What do you think?
 Virgil has the nuts, Vulcan has the knife
41
click picture
for video