RE: Chimp's religion?
May 25, 2021 at 7:41 am
(This post was last modified: May 25, 2021 at 7:52 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Well, religion isn't useless, imitation is a huge portion of human religious behavior, and games are ever present. That some animal would engage in ritual behaviors to mark out an item or location or event it deems to be special or important, and that in a social species these behaviors could spread, isn't beyond the pale.
It's not really an issue of "catching up" - that's an anthropocentric conceit, as are most of our offhand rejections of the idea that other animals might do some of the things that another animal does, particularly closely related ones. I think that it's interesting that if we were to find cairns anywhere else, we'd suspect humans did it, and did it for religious reasons - but because we know that chimps are doing it..we think "not that".
I'd be super interested to know whether the chimps ever take rocks away from the piles, as that might suggest whether there's a personal compulsion to add rocks, or a social taboo against their removal.
It's not really an issue of "catching up" - that's an anthropocentric conceit, as are most of our offhand rejections of the idea that other animals might do some of the things that another animal does, particularly closely related ones. I think that it's interesting that if we were to find cairns anywhere else, we'd suspect humans did it, and did it for religious reasons - but because we know that chimps are doing it..we think "not that".
I'd be super interested to know whether the chimps ever take rocks away from the piles, as that might suggest whether there's a personal compulsion to add rocks, or a social taboo against their removal.
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