Primate Social Behavior Tell Us About Human Evolution - Essay Example

Primate Social Behavior Tell Us about Human Evolution Faculty Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Primate III. Social Behavior IV. Human Evolution V. Conclusion VI. Reference I. Introduction Understanding primate social behavior to understand human evolution is very important. The social behavior culture and different aspects of human society have changed from million of years and is still changing. The culture, social relationships and roles within a society has developed and evolved now. There are various factors which impact this process of evolution. These factors can be analyzed based on environment and ecological perspectives. This paper is an effort to understand primate social behavior with these perspectives and factors. II. Primate Primate study is one of the most important studies of Anthropology. The evolutions of primates lead to development of several social and behavioral characteristics among human. Studying different primate groups offers several common factors. The way young members of the group get treated and cared by the elders, social strategies of individuals, their interaction and division of work all things are visible in all the primates. All the primates whether monkey or men each developed different levels of skills and qualities among them. Each had some differentiated roles for the members of the group based on age, sex and level in the group. It is millions of years of evolution which brought us today here where Human stands as a most superior species in the world. They suggest what social life was like in Australopithecus, in general but not in specifics; the flexibility of social structure in apes’ means that it must have been equally flexible or more so in early hominids. ……..Compared to other primates we must suppose that natural person-to-person relations have in that time become still more fluid, damping somewhat the effects of dominance of personality or of bodily strength. This brings us, let us say, to the later Pleistocene, with living groups larger than those of apes but still of the same order of size.1 As the groups grows and divides the relationship equation changes at various levels. The leaders need to prove themselves in their body strengths as well as should have the ability so that members of the group follow him. The relationship between people increased with their need to stay together for hunting, safety and shelter. When primates started staying together various things got invented, as rightly quoted necessity is mother of invention. The social structures, needs of leaders and followers, complex relationship, distribution of labor and responsibilities based on age, sex and bodily strengths, language and communication methods and many other things developed. III. Social Behavior Different cultures have different characteristics. The study of various cultures comes under ethnography. Culture can be defined as social heritage of human society where social behavior is based on certain norms and rules. Each member of the society needs to abide by these norms and rules. These have an impact on individual and collective behaviors of people. Social behavior has become complex in today’s complex social structure. Social behavior as indicates is the way people live together and communicate with each other. Various biologist and anthropologist have described and explained culture and society differently. Culture and society is different in the modern human society and historical primate’s society. This is the factor which distinguishes the human and nonhuman societies. E. B. Tylor, the father of cultural anthropologists, defined human culture as "capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" ( 1871). More recently, Keesing ( 1958) has defined culture as "the totality of learned socially transmitted behavior," and Oakley ( 1963) has defined it as "the sum total of what a particular society practices, produces, and thinks."2 Culture indicates the collective behavior of any society. The cultural specifications of any particular society can be studied by various natural factors like location of the society, weather, food available, struggle for living and others. Any modern society evolved near to seashore would have included many things and norms which are associated with sea or sea products. The areas where rice production is more paddy or rice will form the main course of food. Hence studying culture and factors included in that culture will indicate the things of major importance of that particular society. Each of these factors would have some relevance with the time period it has been developed. Hence studying these factors may lead us to understand the reasons of those particular factors in any culture and society. Beyond the facilitation of learning, social grouping must have been selected in evolution as an adaptation for mutual defense against predators.3 IV. Human Evolution Evolution of hominid society has impacted the feeding habits of primates in arboreal and pre-adapted bipedal to the terrestrial existence. Human evolution is based on environmental and ecological factors. These factors are complex to analyze but will provide important linking of various cultural and societal factors with these environment and ecological factors. …..at least the costs of large-brained infants are imposed on females, and these are likely to have a major impact on their reproductive success. It appears that in the course of primate evolution in general, and human evolution in particular, the primary means by which these costs have been paid is through slower growth rates (Martin 1983; Smith 1989; Foley & Lee 1991).4 The human evolution process and their social behavior have impacted each other for millions of years. The role played by the environmental and ecological factors has been very important to analyze and evaluate. V. Conclusion As one can understand from the paper the human social behavior has changed with the human evolution process and there are various non-human factors which have impacted the social behavior and culture. These factors can be logically analyzed and linked with the cultural aspects of human social behavior. This paper attempts to study these nonhuman factors and roles played by these factors on development of human social behavior during human evolution process. Studying these factors will help to establish a relationship between the nonhuman factors and human society and culture in the Anthropological studies. VI. References Understanding Behavior: What Primate Studies Tell Us about Human Behavior. Contributors: James D. Loy - editor, Calvin B. Peters - editor. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1991. Getting Here: The Story of Human Evolution. Contributors: William Howells - author. Publisher: Compass Press. Place of Publication: Washington, DC. Publication Year: 1993. Page Number: 232 Causes and Consequences in Human Evolution. Contributors: Robert Foley - author. Journal Title: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Volume: 1. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 67+. COPYRIGHT 1995 Royal Anthropological Institute; COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group Evolutionary Explanations of Human Behavior. Contributors: John H. Cartwright - author. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: Hove, England. Publication Year: 2001 Human Evolution: An Introduction to Mans Adaptations. Contributors: Bernard Campbell - author. Publisher: Aldine De Gruyter. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1998. Page Number: 307 New World Primates: Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. Contributors: Warren G. Kinzey - editor. Publisher: Aldine De Gruyter. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1997 Read More