Ethnic Conflict

[n0mad23]

Greg,

As fairly close birth cohorts, I'm not terribly surprised. There's probably (shudder) more that unites us than divides us.

As for the Bonobo tangent, "The bonobo, Pan Paniscus, split from the human lineage approximately 6.5 million years ago, and from the chimp, Pan troglodytes, around 1.5 million years ago....An initial analysis by researchers at the US National Human Genome Research Institute confirmed that, as expected, the bonobo genome is about 0.4 percent divergent from the chimp genome." (from http://www.in-sequence.com/issues/2_20/features/146891-1.html) This, however, is not what I'm looking for, but does suggest a closer connection on the family tree. I'm still searching, but I'm thinking what I'm looking for comes from Frans de Waal - either his "Chimpanzee Politics," or his book, "Our Inner Ape."

 

[GregBurch]

As fairly close birth cohorts, I'm not terribly surprised. There's probably (shudder) more that unites us than divides us.

As I said once before when we accidentally agreed about something, don't beat yourself up over it. :lol:

As for the Bonobo tangent, "The bonobo, Pan Paniscus, split from the human lineage approximately 6.5 million years ago, and from the chimp, Pan troglodytes, around 1.5 million years ago....An initial analysis by researchers at the US National Human Genome Research Institute confirmed that, as expected, the bonobo genome is about 0.4 percent divergent from the chimp genome." (from http://www.in-sequence.com/issues/2_20/features/146891-1.html) This, however, is not what I'm looking for, but does suggest a closer connection on the family tree. I'm still searching, but I'm thinking what I'm looking for comes from Frans de Waal - either his "Chimpanzee Politics," or his book, "Our Inner Ape."

A totally irrelevant side note: One of my young protoges was a student of Franz de Waal's before she went to law school and worked in his lab as a grunt, caring for the chimps and other primates. She idolizes him, so I've received many of his books as gifts, and have really enjoyed them.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

The same with humans... just let a US citizen try to survive in Germany. We are already adapting to our habitats

What is so fatal to an American citizen in Germany? My father lived there for many years, and I have traveled there several times and thought it was lovely there. Perhaps the fact that my father's family were German-American potato farmers in Pennsylvania smoothed over 400 years of separation across the Atlantic?

@ GregBurch: Your 'xenophilia' discussion got me to thinking that the whole business of enthic divides boils down to whether a person is a 'lumper' or a 'splitter'. Some people seek to categorize where others seek common features. Biologists and anthropologists are forever in conflict about where to draw lines for our human ancestors - is a homo habilis really anything different from a homo ergaster or erectus?

I suppose someone with a zenophilic disposition would be considered a lumper. Such a person would argue, irregardless whether you are American or Swiss or German (or even a bonobo or a gorilla), all have the same fundamental basic needs and desires - food, water, shelter (of a sort) and protection for your kin and progeny.

Others seek to define the divides. My inlaws' parents in Pennsylvania draw some pretty fine distinctions about who constitutes a 'real' American (strangely enough, their idea of a real American describes them perfectly). A few degrees of skin tone or an accent do not qualify, no matter what the State Department thinks. But they live in a place where pretty much everyone looks just like them, vs. living in a big city or a university campus where they would have more international exposure. So can you blame them?

If a Martian landed on our doorstep, would we see the divides, or would we invite them in for dinner? For some, the gaps between me and a Swiss or a German are just as vast. For me, I think the gap is practically nonexistent.

A slight addition to the primatology sideline - I heartily recommend the book 'The Naked Ape' by Desmond Morris. It is a discussion of the behavior of the human species presented as a dispassionate analysis of a primatologist, very interesting

 

[n0mad23]

I'm going to invoke the Bonobos one more time here.

I saw an interview once with Franz de Waal and what really struck me was a story he told about watching a male Bonobo conflict one day. Bonobos, even though considerably smaller than their Common Chimp cousins, have enough upper body strength to make most US football linebackers jealous.

Anyway, a conflict broke out between the two most alpha males and all the other chimps got out of their way. They broke branches and waved them at each other, bared teeth, took some wild swings, and chased each other around their confinement area. This went on for over a half hour, with neither male relenting to the other. Finally one chased the other up a tree and followed. The two males settled onto opposite branches and screamed at each other some more. Finally, one made a gesture to the other and climbed back down from the perch. The other followed. Once back down on the ground, they threw their arms around each other and embraced.

Franz de Waal indicated it was an epiphany for him. That this hug was the first physical contact that the chimps had made during their entire fight. For de Waal, it indicated that even for Bonobos, resolution was the most important part of conflict. Win or lose, we still have to live with each other.

 

[Eagle]

On the subjects of human/primate comparisons (and bonobos directly):
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html

 

[n0mad23]

Yup,

It seems higher order primates are politically hardwired.

Who'd have thunk?

 

[Urwumpe]

What is so fatal to an American citizen in Germany? My father lived there for many years, and I have traveled there several times and thought it was lovely there. Perhaps the fact that my father's family were German-American potato farmers in Pennsylvania smoothed over 400 years of separation across the Atlantic?

My experience with exchange students was, that they mostly get lost with the many local implicit customs. For example the German definition of service, which is still based on being in a friendly way rude. Or the German relation to alcohol, which caused a few exchange students having not only the first, but also the worst hang-over in their life.

So far I had two typical reactions: Converting to a party animal. Or become extremely homesick.

It is not about dying here (we have abolished death penalty in favor of letting you poison yourself with alcohol), but practically the fact, that your behavior as US citizen is formed by dealing with US citizens. Your instincts won't work here, you need to think a lot more about what you do here. Especially when visiting sport events.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

My experience with exchange students was, that they mostly get lost with the many local implicit customs. For example the German definition of service, which is still based on being in a friendly way rude. Or the German relation to alcohol, which caused a few exchange students having not only the first, but also the worst hang-over in their life.

So far I had two typical reactions: Converting to a party animal. Or become extremely homesick.

It is not about dying here (we have abolished death penalty in favor of letting you poison yourself with alcohol), but practically the fact, that your behavior as US citizen is formed by dealing with US citizens. Your instincts won't work here, you need to think a lot more about what you do here. Especially when visiting sport events.

Well, all I will say is that not all US citizens come from the same mold. I'm sorry that your primary exposure has been to exchange students.

 

[simonpro]

I've experienced the same thing with US exchange students in Denmark and Sweden. They do one of two things:
1) Go out every night and get hopelessy drunk.
2) Stay in all the time and complain they don't like being in DK/SWE.

I've yet to encounter one who does anything else. It's only natural, Scandinavians aren't Americans, and Americans get confused by that. Scandinavians are the same when they go to the USA.

 

[joeybigO]

Same thing with other exchange students i've seen from:
Brasil, Columbia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England, and other countries.

They go out and get plastered, and wind up getting in trouble because they think that the laws of their countries apply here (e.g. I can drink when i'm 18)
Or they get homesick.

Fair enough to say that it implies implicitly across the board.

I would like to say that I don't think any of "you all" would enjoy being in New York to live for a few days or (shudder) months...

 

[GregBurch]

In my experience there's a relatively small number of personality types who adapt well to living for extended periods of time in a culture other than the one in which they grew up.

A good question would be whether the traits that make people good "cross-cultural adapters" can be learned and, if so, whether it's like language in that it's something that's much easier to learn when you're young.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think you need first some protection against the culture shock and finally a unassuming mind. Good preparation could be helpful. I noticed that many exchange students arrive with very little knowledge about the country, usually only with touristic information, which is enough for 2 weeks, but not for 6 months at least.

Age has nothing to do with it. In my personal opinion, I even think, US WW2 veterans, who return to Germany are often better prepared for their journey and more open to new things, as young travelers.

 

[jedidia]

I think you need first some protection against the culture shock

Being an intercultural worker I have not yet seen a protection against culture shock other than information. First, all the more you know about the culture you're going to get in, the better. Second, be convinced that your actual experience will be different than what you expected from your knowledge about the culture, and third, know that culture shock will hit you sooner or later and that it will PASS if you endure long enough.

Being adaptable to other cultures is mostly a question of motivation I think: You have to want to get into another culture, and you must be willing to endure a while until you find yourself at home. If these two requirements are met, I think anyone can adapt.

There are of course psychological traits that help or hinder, but they're majorly related to other things. For example your perception of good and bad. The more black/white ones perception is, the harder it will be, because he will inadvertently label the customs of his upbringings "good" and foreign ones as "bad". Since he wants to be good, he has a problem adapting to the "bad" customs, so his conciousness makes him unsuited to adapt to another culture. He can still adapt if his motivation gets big enough (his life depends on it or whatever), but he'll have to "jump over his own shadow", as we say, while for somebody else the whole thing is much more like an adventure than a battle.

So the psychological ability could be best described with "open-mindednes", allthough this can be a bit of a misleading description.

 

[cjp]

Being an intercultural worker I have not yet seen a protection against culture shock other than information. First, all the more you know about the culture you're going to get in, the better.

Yeah, I guess that really is the thing that helped me when I was in Japan for about 4 months. But to me it was more like, after reading some of the most bizarre stories about Japanese culture, I found out that in real life they are actually normal human beings just like you and me. After that experience, I knew I would be able to survive. And, when you find out that there actually is a little bit of truth in these bizarre stories, you are happy to recognize it and experience it with a smile on your face.

I'm too much of a nerd to get into the partying and getting drunk every night. And I guess my friends there really helped me not getting homesick. Though I have to admit that many of my friends there were not Japanese, but French, American, German, Pakistani, Australian, and all those other people who were "Lost in Translation" like me. I guess that if all nationalities and ethnic groups need to be united, it needs to be done by putting us in contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.

 

[David]

As for the Bonobo tangent, "The bonobo, Pan Paniscus, split from the human lineage approximately 6.5 million years ago, and from the chimp, Pan troglodytes, around 1.5 million years ago....An initial analysis by researchers at the US National Human Genome Research Institute confirmed that, as expected, the bonobo genome is about 0.4 percent divergent from the chimp genome." (from http://www.in-sequence.com/issues/2_20/features/146891-1.html) This, however, is not what I'm looking for, but does suggest a closer connection on the family tree.

I infer, from this description, that humans had a common ancestor with chimps/bonobos - humans diverged from that ancestor (6.5myo), then it split into chimps and bonobos, diverging from each other (1.5myo). Thus, there is no basis for supposing that humans are more closely related, genetically, to either one or the other; humans are related to that which would later become both.

It occurred to me that, perhaps, one could suppose that bonobos (for example) had retained more of the genes of their common (with the chimp) ancestor, while the chimps' genes were more different from that ancestor, and thus bonobos would be more genetically similar to humans. But I think that is not likely, since mutations tend to occur at a constant rate, so that chimps and bonobos would be genetically different from their common ancestor, by the same number of mutations, since the same amount of time had elapsed, since their divergence from that ancestor. There remains a question of the extent to which selection would operate on these mutations, so that it still seems possible that an ultimate comparison between humans, and chimps or bonobos, could show that there is more similarity, wrt humans, in the genome of either chimps or bonobos, but I'm not sure what significance could be attributed to that. Basically, I infer that chimps and bonobos would be, evolutionarily, equally related to humans.

 

[Xantcha]

Speaking of human ancestors - when/why humans lost fur? May be it's stupid question, but it's a major characteristic to differentiate between large ape and human.
A little off-topic but I'm really interested in answer. Just could not miss a chance

 

[Urwumpe]

Speaking of human ancestors - when/why humans lost fur? May be it's stupid question, but it's a major characteristic to differentiate between large ape and human.
A little off-topic but I'm really interested in answer. Just could not miss a chance

We never lost fur. We reduced the amount of it. Most likely when we started wearing clothes. I am not even sure if we really genetically reduced the amount of fur. I notice on myself, that my body hair also follows my typical clothing pattern: Where my T-Shirts end my arm hair starts.

 

[n0mad23]

David,

Digging around has forced me to accept the Common Chimp/Bonobo studies continue to be controversial. Some claim that they're both equally close relatives, but I've also found findings that suggest that we share 96% of our DNA with Chimps, but

we share 98.4% or our DNA with Bonobos.


​

What it really comes down to is that we split from our common ancestor at the same time the Chimp did. Down the evolutionary road, the Bonobos and Common Chimps split again.

In terms of physical similarities, I'll stand by the position that we continue to have more in common with the Bononbo than our mutual cousin. At least in physical characteristics. Bonobos spend far more time walking upright than the Common Chimp, and the Bonobos don't only mate when females are in estrus. They also show a much greater cultural diversity between groups than the Common Chimp.

What's important about this, and why I brought it up at all is how we use this information to justify our own cultural positions. For instance, Peterson and Wrangham used Common Chimpanzee behavior studies in their book, Demonic Males, to argue that human males are by nature violent. Human evolution is a five million year old story of warfare, violence, rape and aggression. If in fact we are more closely related to the Bonobo than the Common Chimp, isn't this a problem?

In a counter-argument to Peterson and Wrangham, Parish, de Waal, and Haig published an article in 2000 titled, "The Other 'Closest Living Relative': How Bonobos (Pan paniscus) Challenge Traditional Assumptions about Females, Dominace, Intra- and Intersexual Interactions, and Hominid Evolution." Here's the abstract:

"Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) societies are typically characterized as physically aggressive, male-bonded and male-dominated. Their close relatives, the bonobos (Pan paniscus), differ in startling and significant ways. For instance, female bonobos bond with one another, form coalitions, and dominate males. A pattern of reluctance to consider, let alone acknowledge, female dominance in bonobos exists, however. Because both species are equally “man’s” closest relative, the bonobo social system complicates models of human evolution that have historically been based upon referents that are male and chimpanzee-like. The bonobo evidence suggests that models of human evolution must be reformulated such that they also accommodate: real and meaningful female bonds; the possibility of systematic female dominance over males; female mating strategies which encompass extra-group paternities; hunting and meat distribution by females; the importance of the sharing of plant foods; affinitive inter-community interactions; males that do not stalk and attack and are not territorial; and flexible social relationships in which philopatry does not necessarily predict bonding pattern."

It's an argument I've made before, but with this audience it seems worth repeating. We're so hard wired for culture that we often naturalize our cultural position and validate it with biological evidence. The nice thing about science (when it's not dogmatic) is the ability to revise positions based on improved evidence.

 

[Eagle]

Good post Nomad.

Several American Indian tribes were grouped/governed/same-sort-of-thing by females. I think the Cherokee was one of them, but I'm having trouble finding evidence on the net. Correction: Iroquois

Really if Bonobos had the capability to speak our language/communicate-more-naturally several more similarities would present themselves.

EDIT:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy#Existing_matrifocal_cultures
Wikipedia has a small list, but even if you think a little about gender roles in modern culture some similarities still exist.

 

[n0mad23]

Eagle,

The Iroquois are maybe who you're thinking of. The chiefs were male, but elected/selected by the women. It's where "knocking the horns off a chief" comes from. Don't serve the women community's interest and that's all it took. What I find really interesting here is how stickball (lacrosse) was an alternative to all out war. Let the boys beat the out of each other, but keep it reasonable.