Although humans have evolved and no longer use such gestures as the apes, we have retained to some extent an innate understanding of this ancient communication system
Humans are able to understand the gestures of great apes such as chimpanzees and bonobos much better than expected, even though we ourselves no longer make the same gestures, new British scientific research shows.
The study likely shows that the last common ancestor of apes and humans used similar gestures, which formed the basis of communication for the next major step in the evolution of human language.
Researchers from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, led by Kirsty Graham and Kathryn Hobeiter, who made the relevant publication in the biology journal PLoS Biology, estimate that the discovery of gestures by monkeys in the distant past was the first step in communication .
More than 80 such monkey communication “signals” have been identified to date, conveying various messages (eg “scratch me” or “give me your food” or “let’s have sex”). Many of these gestures are common among apes, even among distantly related ones (eg, chimpanzees and orangutans).
The study
The researchers studied whether humans can understand the meaning of the ten most common gestures used by our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, as well as bonobos, two species of apes that share 95% of gestures in common.
More than 5,600 people were asked online to watch 20 short videos of monkey gestures and then say what they understood.
It found that people did much better than scientists expected, correctly interpreting the gestures with a success rate of 52% to 57%. The researchers concluded that although humans have evolved and no longer use such gestures as apes, we have retained to some extent an innate understanding of this ancient communication system. It remains unclear whether this ability is “engraved” in the neurons of the brain and is inherited from one generation of people to the next.
The origin and evolution of language remains a fascinating and controversial scientific issue. “We are now fairly certain that our ancestors started communicating with gestures and then this evolved into language,” said Dr Graham.
“We were really surprised by the results. We all seem to be able to do it (understand monkeys’ gestures) almost instinctively, which is fascinating from the perspective of the evolution of communication,” said Dr Hobeiter.
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