Evolution Chimps, Bonobos, and Humans may share a Common Body Language

Jovialis

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http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...d-even-humans-may-share-ancient-body-language

Cross-species comparison of great ape gesturing has so far been limited to the physical form of gestures in the repertoire, without questioning whether gestures share the same meanings. Researchers have recently catalogued the meanings of chimpanzee gestures, but little is known about the gesture meanings of our other closest living relative, the bonobo. The bonobo gestural repertoire overlaps by approximately 90% with that of the chimpanzee, but such overlap might not extend to meanings. Here, we first determine the meanings of bonobo gestures by analysing the outcomes of gesturing that apparently satisfy the signaller. Around half of bonobo gestures have a single meaning, while half are more ambiguous. Moreover, all but 1 gesture type have distinct meanings, achieving a different distribution of intended meanings to the average distribution for all gesture types. We then employ a randomisation procedure in a novel way to test the likelihood that the observed between-species overlap in the assignment of meanings to gestures would arise by chance under a set of different constraints. We compare a matrix of the meanings of bonobo gestures with a matrix for those of chimpanzees against 10,000 randomised iterations of matrices constrained to the original data at 4 different levels. We find that the similarity between the 2 species is much greater than would be expected by chance. Bonobos and chimpanzees share not only the physical form of the gestures but also many gesture meanings.

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2004825
 
That's very interesting. The implications of a common sign language for bonobos, chimps and humans is that sign language is innate and coded in DNA. If it is true of sign language, then some of the basis for verbal language must also have a genetic underpinning, as Noam Chomsky suggested in his innateness hypothesis.
 
That's very interesting. The implications of a common sign language for bonobos, chimps and humans is that sign language is innate and coded in DNA. If it is true of sign language, then some of the basis for verbal language must also have a genetic underpinning, as Noam Chomsky suggested in his innateness hypothesis.

Bonobos are very much less aggressive if compared with others Apes, (Humans Included).
What ever gene cause this Tollerance, it’s probably missing in the rest of the others Ape.
Is Violence DNA Encoded?
or, is it diminished by a Lack of Predators?

“Bonobos live south of the river Congo, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the common chimpanzee, which live north.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo
 
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