Anthropology 261 - Primate Behavior - U. Waterloo, 1986.
Lark Ritchie.

Table of Contents
  - Introduction: What is a 'Human'? 6

1. Behavior as an Ultimate Cause for Natural Selection. 9

... A. An Example of Natural Selection Through Behavior. 9

... B. What do Anatomical Differences Mean? 11

... C. Information Processing as the Criterion for Classification. 11

2. Separating the Human from Primates. 11

... A. Anatomy 11

... B. Behavior 11

... C. Intellect 12

... D. Communication. 13

... E. Culture. 13

3. Answering The Questions. 14

... A. Monkeys and Man 14

... B. Great Apes and Man. 14

... C. The Natural Selection of Communication. 15

...... i). Questions Concerning Communication. 16

... ... ii). The Growth of Consciousness. 18

4. Conclusion.            19

References Cited.     21

The "Human Being" - A Search for Ultimate Causation

Introduction: What is a 'Human'?

What do we mean by the label 'human'? Is a human a physical manifestation, a skeletal type, a species, or something else? Donald Johanson (1982:100), describing the classification of Homo habilis discovered by the Leaky team at Olduvai in 1964, wrote:

"But should that species be Homo? Why not another kind of Australopithecus? How small a brain could a hominid have and still qualify as human? In fact, how did one even define a human?
It may seem ridiculous for science to have been talking about humans and pre-humans and proto-humans for more that a century without ever nailing down what a human was. Ridiculous or not, that was the situation. We do not have, even today, an agreed-on definition of human-kind, a clear set of specifications that will enable any anthropologist in the world to say quickly and with confidence, 'This one is a human, that one isn't'."

Although most anthropologists and paleoanthropologists seem to define a human by the physical characteristics of skeletal structure, I feel that a human cannot be rigidly defined using these attributes. The human being, from my point of view, is a state of being, a state of consciousness. Kenneth P. Oakly (1968:3), in his book, Man the Tool Maker, cites Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark as commenting:

'Probably the differentiation of man from ape will ultimately rest on a functional rather than on an anatomical basis, the criterion of humanity being the ability to speak and to make tools.' This amounts to saying that the real difference between what we call an ape and what we call a man is one of mental capacity. It is worth considering the psychology of apes with this point of view in mind.'
Evolutionarily speaking, this makes it impossible to categorize a fossil as human, or not human, since there is no direct method to determine the organism's mental capacity or state of consciousness. As a result, scientists concentrate their efforts of definition to the concrete, measurable, and available artifacts periodically surfaced from the beds of history.

Even so, their definitions of 'human' can never be complete without a knowledge of the animal's capacity for information processing, self awareness, and ingenuity, for we are the species that generally feels itself as unique and somehow apart from the rest of nature by this dubious quality of our intellect.

This presents a problem, in that if a definition, as extended by Le Gros Clark, is based strictly on a mental capacity, or what I call a state of being, there must exist some limit to what we call human. A problem because, there exist, many of our kind that may not exceed that level of discrimination for a variety of physiological reasons. To say that they should not be classed as 'humans' is almost unthinkable.

Then why do we try to define some thing as 'human'? The fact is our kind does exist, we are a species by definition, and we are searching for our origins for a number of reasons. We are asking the questions 'what happened to make us mankind?' 'when did we arise?', and 'how did we get here?'. In attempting to answer these questions, the objective has to be viewed as a pin-pointing of the beginning of the genus Homo. This leads to the definition of the various species of Homo, and the subsequent question of the origins of man, the Human Being.

Is Homo sapiens , habilis, erectus, or some other species of animal the beginning of the human state of consciousness?

This approach also presents another problem identified by Johanson, in discussing the definition of species. The definition includes the characteristic of genetic isolation (not being able to produce fertile offspring). He goes on to say that species can be isolated both horizontally (physically, such as by geography, or behaviorally, such as by non-recognition of another as suitable partners), and vertically by way of time:

"Isolation in single populations is also achieved through time. Here the separation is not so much horizontal as vertical. We are concerned with descending lineages, and the changes that take place over many generations within groups, not between them. Homo erectus did not produce several types that now, a million years later, confront each other as biological strangers. Human beings the world over can and do interbreed today. What Homo Erectus did was sire descendants who might not recognize him as a sexual partner. It would be interesting to know if a modern man and a million-year old Homo Erectus woman could together produce a fertile child. The strong hunch is that they could; such evolution as has taken place is probably not the kind that would prevent a successful mating. But that does not flaw the validity of the species definition given above, because the two cannot mate. They are reproductively isolated by time. Therefore, somewhere along the evolutionary path that leads from one species to another a species line may be drawn if, in the opinion of the anatomists, the differences between them are significant." (1982:144)

If we subscribe to the theory of evolution, we must at some point between the first living cells of the Precambrian and creatures such as the one we called Albert Einstein, create species dividing lines, or at least grey fuzzy divisional areas, that allow distinction. Presently, anatomists use the concept of significant differences in skeletal structure to segregate species.

I feel that this method of distinction is limited in that the separations are too gross: too gross because from one day to the next, or one year to the next, we cannot say that a dividing line exists between individuals from the physiological perspective. If we consider Joahanson's statements above, vertical isolation can only be identified in large gaps of time, after which physiological changes have occurred.

to be continued...