While human history is usually studied from the perspective of a few hundred years, anthropologists consider deeper causes for the ways we act. Now, in these 12 engrossing lectures, you'll join an expert anthropologist as she opens an enormous window of understanding for you into the thrilling legacy left by our primate past. In these lectures, you'll investigate a wealth of intriguing, provocative questions about our past and our relationship to primates. Are language and technology unique to humans? Have human love and loyalty developed from emotions of our primate cousins? Do the ways in which human males and females relate to each other come from our primate past? Have we inherited a biological tendency for aggression? How much of our behavioral, cognitive, and cultural identity have we inherited from our closest living relatives? How can the study of monkeys and apes lead us to a fuller picture of who we are? Along the way, you'll learn about the landmark moment in the 1960s when dramatic new findings about apes changed the way we thought about ourselves; you'll look back to a forest in Africa, millions of years ago, when a generalized great ape ancestor split into distinct lineages, then evolved and divided further to create our closest living relatives, and human beings; you'll journey to Asia and the New World, where other anthropoid primates followed their own evolutionary course, separate from the human lineage, yet still connected in important ways; and much more.This thorough and critical examination of our diverse primate roots will allow you to finally see our human family in an entirely new light.
Roots of Human Behavior
01: The Four Facets of Anthropology
Anthropology comprises many ways to study humanity, but a biological anthropologist focuses on the evolution of the human, anatomically and behaviorally. We begin with the evolutionary link between humans and other anthropoid primates that was posited by Charles Darwin more than 100 years ago.
02: Social Bonds and Family Ties
The very idea of a "solitary anthropoid" is a contradiction in terms. Monkeys and apes are social animals, whose life experiences are defined by their place as an individual within a group. These arrangements have practical advantages and are emotionally and developmentally meaningful.
03: The Journey Away from Mom
An anthropoid infant's progress to adulthood is one many of us would recognize. Beginning in absolute dependence, the infant adapts to the world through exploration and play. Some will stay "at home" to form the core of their native communities, while others will disperse to find new homes.
04: Males and Females—Really So Different?
Forty years ago the stereotype of males as promiscuous aggressors and females as passive mother figures held sway. Studies of the most recently discovered great ape, the bonobo, changed this uncomplicated dichotomy dramatically.
05: Sex and Reproduction
As with male-female differences, ideas on sex and reproduction have withstood revision in recent years. Variations in behavior across species complicates any conclusions we might draw about a fixed and clearly defined sexual nature in humans.
06: Tool Making—Of Hammers and Anvils
New research shows that great apes engage in spontaneous problem solving and other advanced cognitive behavior in producing tools for grooming and feeding, and even escaping from captivity! A study of orangutans in Sumatra suggests that social tolerance and cooperation play a critical role in this behavior.
07: Social Learning and Teaching
A conundrum faced by any primatologist is determining whether an advanced behavior has been spontaneously invented, learned through a trial-and-error, or acquired through teaching. What is certain is that learning is a dynamic process that is actively pursued, not passively absorbed.
08: Culture—What Is It? Who’s Got It?
No concept other than culture has been more controversial historically. Many great ape communities have developed group-specific behaviors that have survived and been passed on over time, and some of these actions are even thought to show conceptual understanding and convey symbolic meaning. Whether this represents culture depends on your definition of the term.
09: Dynamics of Social Communication
It was once thought that communication in great apes and monkeys was limited to expressions of emotion and states of arousal. But data on predator-specific alarm calls among vervet monkeys in Kenya suggest that anthropoid primates can communicate information to achieve dynamic social coordination.
10: Do Great Apes Use Language?
Great apes raised in an enriched human environment exhibit an expanded range of linguistic skills, showing the equally important roles played by both biological dispositions and the rearing environment. Are our complex languages unique in kind or only in degree?
11: Highlights of Human Evolution
More than four million years ago the hominids emerged, and by 30,000 years ago "Homo sapiens" had outcompeted and replaced other hominids. Yet despite bipedalism, mastery of fire, and construction of stone tools that render the hominids unique, a surprising number of their behaviors are found in our anthropoid relatives: the monkeys and apes.
12: Exploring and Conserving a Legacy
Anthropoid primates are valuable as creatures in their own right and as a critical lens through which to view ourselves. How, then, should we deal with the forces that imperil them, from medical research to economic development and the deadly bushmeat trade? Dr. Barbara J. King offers a balanced assessment.
Overview Course No. 168
About
Dr. Barbara J. King is a biological anthropologist and Chancellor Professor of Anthropology at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology from Douglass College, Rutgers University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. Professor King's research interests concern the social communication of the great apes, the closest living relatives to humans. She has studied ape and monkey behavior in Gabon, Kenya, and at the Language Research Center at Georgia State University. The recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, she has published three books on anthropology, including The Information Continuum: Social Information Transfer in Monkeys, Apes, and Hominids. At William and Mary, Professor King has won four teaching awards: The William and Mary Alumni Association Teaching Award, the college's Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, the Virginia State Council of Higher Education for Virginia's Outstanding Faculty Award, and the designation of University Professor for Teaching Excellence, 1999-2002.
