Researchers from the University of Zurich demonstrate that chimpanzees gain knowledge and their behaviors become more complex thanks to encounters between individuals from different groups.
Are migrations synonymous with knowledge gains? For chimpanzees, yes. In any case, this is what three doctors from the University of Zurich in Switzerland seem to have concluded in a study published Thursday, November 21 in the journal Science. Led by doctoral student in human evolutionary ecology Cassandra Gunasekaram, the article makes the link between the cultural complexity of certain chimpanzees and migrations, recalling that she means by culture “a set of socially learned behaviors”. To document these behaviors, the researcher mainly relies on the transmission and evolution between groups of chimpanzees of the practice of gathering.
Cassandra Gunasekaram combined recent genetic data on chimpanzee migration with archives from the Pan-African Chimpanzee Culture Program. She looked at the transmission of 15 different gathering practices among 35 populations from the 4 subspecies of chimpanzees. Result ? The more complex gathering methods – including the use of sophisticated tools, such as hammer shapes – were more closely linked to recent genetic markers of chimpanzee migration, “suggesting that these behaviors likely come from cultural transmission between groups,” analyzes the article. Conversely, behaviors involving simple tools or the absence of tools are weakly associated with genetic markers of recent migration. These practices could therefore potentially have emerged in regions independently during evolution.
The links between chimpanzees and humans are getting closer
In the hominid family, the chimpanzee is considered the species of ape closest to humans. But unlike the chimpanzee, whose observation of populations notes a limited connectivity between them, the human being has stood out throughout its evolution by the cumulative and complex nature of its culture. Today, Cassandra Gunasekaram’s study, “excited to test whether the process of cultural diffusion in chimpanzees was comparable to that of humans,” states that “connectivity between groups” appears to play a role in “cultural accumulation” chimpanzees. And this even though their culture is considered simpler and less complex than that of human beings. 6 million years ago, the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans probably had the capacity to accumulate knowledge, but this dynamic may have been limited by low levels of migration between the groups, as was the case case for chimpanzees.
Man, having become more and more social and mobile throughout his evolution, was able to completely develop this capacity. “This study provides evidence that chimpanzees may also have so-called incipient cumulative culture, at a much slower rate than in humans,” says Gunasekaram to Liberation. The study, according to the researcher, could be “one of the first to show the importance of connections and contacts between groups for the evolution of a complex culture in chimpanzees.”
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