History of Animal Culture Theory
Though the idea of 'culture' in animals has only been around for just over half of a century, scientists have been noting social behaviors of animals for centuries. Aristotle was the first to provide evidence of social learning in the songs of birds. Charles Darwin first attempted to find the existence of imitation in animals when attempting to prove his theory that the human mind had evolved from that of lower beings. Darwin was also the first to suggest what became known as social learning in attempting to explain the transmission of an adaptive pattern of behavior through a population of honey bees.
The vast majority of cultural anthropological research has been done on non-human primates, due to their being closest evolutionarily to humans. In non-primate animals, research tends to be limited, and therefore evidence for culture strongly lacking. However, the subject has become more popular recently, and has prompted the initiation of more research into the area.
Read more about this topic: Animal Culture
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, animal, culture and/or theory:
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)
“The highest end of government is the culture of men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)