Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans • Hacker News Board

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#121

Post by HarHarVeryFunny » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 12:22 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #105

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't pretend to know what makes us human, but ultimately I believe it has to be rooted in something neurological In terms of intelligence, yes, but in terms of what we've achieved then "technology" such as writing/archiving certainly has made a massive difference, else we'd be limited to what could be built by passing down oral history and skills passed from one generation to the next, much like Aboriginal Austr…

The question is whether or not cultures that had no writing systems were limited to the same level of intelligence and/or development that other primates exhibit. Given that with exception of an interesting knot-encoded (Quipu) system for some period of the Inca empire, the entire human population of the Americas (at least 15-20% of the total human population) fits this description, the answer seems to be "no". These…

Yes, for sure humans are fundamentally more intelligent than other primates, but still it does seem that writing and written communication is a big capability unlock.

It's impressive, and perhaps a bit surprising, what a culture like the Incas were able to achieve using only (we assume) oral tradition and passing down of skills, but there must be a limit to the complexity of what can be passed down this way - more along the lines of the skillset of an individual man being passed to an apprentice, but presumably also "managers/planners" passing down skills as well as tradesmen.

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#122

Post by curtisszmania » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 1:14 PM UTC

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Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#123

Post by simonh » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 1:18 PM UTC

mattdeboard wrote: post #20

Reinforcing my strongly held belief that what fundamentally sets humans apart isn't spoken language, or tools, or any of that, but rather the fact we write down what we know, then make those writings available to future generations to build on. We're a species distinguished from all others by our information-archival and -dissemination practices. We're an archivist species, a librarian species. Homo archivum. In my o…

I think the key differentiator is Prefrontal Synthesis.

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

This is the ability to mentally compose conceptual objects in complex relationships.

In fact I don’t think there really is one single significant differentiator. There are many. However without this one technology beyond simple single function tools such as a hand axe or pointed stick, and simple linguistic statements wouldn’t be be possible.

The linguistic composition described in the article sound similar if dramatically more primitive, but I don’t think we can assume it comes from a common ancestor. It may well be that this capability has a different neurological basis, since these animals don’t have a prefrontal cortex. So it seems plausible this is a case or parallel evolution of a very rudimentary similar feature. Fascinating stuff though.

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#124

Post by mystified5016 » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 1:32 PM UTC

ghc wrote: post #26

mattdeboard wrote: post #20

Reinforcing my strongly held belief that what fundamentally sets humans apart isn't spoken language, or tools, or any of that, but rather the fact we write down what we know, then make those writings available to future generations to build on. We're a species distinguished from all others by our information-archival and -dissemination practices. We're an archivist species, a librarian species. Homo archivum. In my o…

If that were the case, then you would expect isolated groups of humans who never developed a writing system to be significantly different from "homo archivum", but we know that's not true. We also know that groups without writing systems were historically able to adopt writing systems rather quickly, which is, I think, rather good evidence that writing is a technology, not a point of speciation. Going back to Ancient…

Don't forget that homo sapiens is not the only humanoid species to evolve on this planet. We had a few different contemporaries in prehistory.

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#125

Post by bobxmax » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 2:01 PM UTC

mattdeboard wrote: post #20

Reinforcing my strongly held belief that what fundamentally sets humans apart isn't spoken language, or tools, or any of that, but rather the fact we write down what we know, then make those writings available to future generations to build on. We're a species distinguished from all others by our information-archival and -dissemination practices. We're an archivist species, a librarian species. Homo archivum. In my o…

Your strongly held belief that flies in the face of the dominant belief among today's leading linguists

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#126

Post by Telemakhos » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 3:57 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #105

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't pretend to know what makes us human, but ultimately I believe it has to be rooted in something neurological In terms of intelligence, yes, but in terms of what we've achieved then "technology" such as writing/archiving certainly has made a massive difference, else we'd be limited to what could be built by passing down oral history and skills passed from one generation to the next, much like Aboriginal Austr…

The question is whether or not cultures that had no writing systems were limited to the same level of intelligence and/or development that other primates exhibit. Given that with exception of an interesting knot-encoded (Quipu) system for some period of the Inca empire, the entire human population of the Americas (at least 15-20% of the total human population) fits this description, the answer seems to be "no". These…

There was literacy in the Americas prior to Columbus. Among the Aztecs, the tlacuilos (scribes) were educated in the calmecac. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isthmian_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmec_hieroglyphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapotec_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixtec_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_script

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#127

Post by vinceguidry » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #82

vinceguidry wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a LOT of research on this. A popsci book I've read on the topic is Adam's Tongue. It details the features that separate what's called Animal Communication Systems from human language. https://www.amazon.com/Adams-Tongue-Humans-Made-Language-ebo... Obviously pets are quite capable of making their wishes known to us, especially if we facilitate it. It's unclear whether they're actually achieving language…

I had a dog that you could ask to do complex tasks and he'd happily go about and do it. "Go around the corner and get your toy out of the laundry basket". He'd go around the corner and get his toy out of the laundry basket. You could also ask him to get dressed (he'd get his rain coat and do his best to put it on) and you could ask him to get other dogs ready to go (he'd grab their leashes and drape the leash around…

It's been awhile since I read the book, but I do seem to remember them discussing crows specifically.

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#128

Post by retrac » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

Telemakhos wrote: post #126

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether or not cultures that had no writing systems were limited to the same level of intelligence and/or development that other primates exhibit. Given that with exception of an interesting knot-encoded (Quipu) system for some period of the Inca empire, the entire human population of the Americas (at least 15-20% of the total human population) fits this description, the answer seems to be "no". These…

There was literacy in the Americas prior to Columbus. Among the Aztecs, the tlacuilos (scribes) were educated in the calmecac. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isthmian_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmec_hieroglyphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapotec_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixtec_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_script

Just to be pedantic, it is unclear if the Aztecs had "full writing". The notation system in the codices is probably more like a kind of mnemonic and accounting system along with a calendar. They probably couldn't write arbitrary sentences. But so little material survives we don't actually know!

The Maya though absolutely had "full writing" at least during the classical phase around 200 - 800 AD, and their writing probably derived from the older Olmec system. The Maya system worked much like classical Japanese or ancient Egyptian, and uses a mix of ideographs and purely phonetic symbols. They could, and did, write anything they could say. There are historical accounts of battles and names and etc. given in monumental inscriptions. And it is almost certain during the classical era that the Maya had full literature, with stories, mythology, histories, anthologies, religious scripture, etc. There were probably still priests who could read the Maya system when the Spanish arrived - one Jesuit recorded notes that indicate some of the phonetic values of some of the symbols correctly! - but they were mostly killed and most of the codices burned by the conquistadors.

It was not deciphered again until the 1970s and it's sadly still not widely appreciated that Mesoamerica had literate civilizations.

Fun fact: The Maya were such good astronomers and record-keepers that we have exact date alignment, which we have neither for Ancient Egypt or for Mesopotamia. For example any dates in Assyrian records are subject to a ~40 year window of uncertainty for exactly when they occurred. There is no such ambiguity for the Maya: Pacal the Great almost certainly died on August 29, 683.

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#129

Post by dennis_moore » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:07 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #106

gnulinux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teotihuacan rather famously was not a literate society Isn't this going a bit too far? Sure they didn't have a modern writing system like Mayans, or even proto-writing systems like Inca's quipu but we do have hard evidence of Teotihuacan society communicating language with painted symbols (e.g. findings in La Ventilla). It's unclear to me how we can say they didn't leave writing to future generations (especially as…

Agree with most of what you're saying here, but: > But animals are incapable of doing so, even if a Bonobo is roughly as intelligent as a human, it's not like it can transmit any kind of information to future generations, so every generation of Bonobos need to learn either from scratch or from their community. We just don't know if this is true.

Cultural learning has definitely been observed in animals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_culture

Re: Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans

#130

Post by nine_k » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

mattdeboard wrote: post #20

Reinforcing my strongly held belief that what fundamentally sets humans apart isn't spoken language, or tools, or any of that, but rather the fact we write down what we know, then make those writings available to future generations to build on. We're a species distinguished from all others by our information-archival and -dissemination practices. We're an archivist species, a librarian species. Homo archivum. In my o…

I would say that the real killer invention of humans, compared to other apes, is the way to overcome the Dunbar number and organize very large coordinated groups.

The rise of agriculture in Mesopotamia enabled by it predates writing systems, and the first cuneiform records are purely numerical, for asset tracking. Huge armies, like these of Alexander or Genghis Khan, consisted of mostly illiterate warriors.

I'd argue that the invention of the virtual hierarchies, when a peasant submits to a king who he never saw in person, eventually led to the invention of gods, and later a supreme "creator of the universe" figure. That allowed for even more complex cooperative social structures, still across mostly illiterate populations, even though holy scriptures play a central role in such religions.