II. Some Other Human Instincts: A Short Summary

We have already seen that Frederick Turner adds combat, gifts, mime, friendship, lying, love, storytelling, and murder taboos to the list of sixty-seven human cultural universals; and I have included such neurocharms as narrative, selecting, classification, musical meter, tempo, rhythm, tone, melody, harmony, pattern recognition, giving meaning to certain color combinations, hypothesis, metaphysical synthesis, collecting, metaphor, syntactical organization, gymnastics, the martial arts, mapping, the capacity for geometry and ideography, poetic meter, cuisine, and massage. Many of these instincts are not uniquely human, though we have retained them: combat, gifts, mime, friendship, lying, love, narrative, selecting, classification, musical meter, tempo, rhythm, tone, melody, harmony, and pattern recognition can be found in other animals, including chimpanzees, gibbons, and, particularly the music neurocharms, in birds. But let us consider the possible origins of some of the uniquely human universals.

Table IV

Age Grading — this could have come from our extended sense of time, which we get from the recursive narrative structure of language + counting (which one could imagine coming from something like musical meter or tempo combining with language, or naming) + social hierarchy

Athletic Sports — this could have come from ritual + combat

Calendar — this could have come from our extended sense of time + counting + our recognition that there is a cyclical aspect to nature (an eternal return of the seasons, of the moon phases, of star patterns)

Cooking — discovery of fire + eating rituals + family feasting

Cosmology — need to explain everything to ourselves and each other, from langauge

Cuisine — instinct for beauty applied to taste + cooking

Dancing — ritualizing body movements to make more orderly + sexual display + music

Dream Interp. — our theory of mind + language + our instinct to create meaning

Ethnobotany — selecting + classification (as applied to plants)

Etiquette — ritualizing body movements to make more orderly + (for specifically dining etiquette) eating rituals + family feasting

Fire-Making — discovery of fire (from extended notions of what a “tool” could be)

Folklore — a kind of storytelling

Food Taboos — this could have come from our extended sense of time, leading to an awareness that certain foods can cause illness (later extended to taboos such as the American one against eating horse, following the close personal relationship Americans developed with the horse, due to our history – showing such instincts can be expanded to include emotional concerns)

Funeral Rites — this could have come from our extended sense of time, leading to an awareness of our own immanent deaths + ritual (to make meaning of the person’s death)

Hair Styles — bodily adornment + cleanliness training + hygiene (orderly hair = clean)

Hospitality — this could have come from our extended sense of time, leading to extended notions of kin groups + gift-giving + family feasting + greetings + visiting

Gymnastics — ritualizing body movements to make more orderly + strength-sexual display

Inheritance — property rights + knowledge of paternity (developed as we became increasingly monogamous) + extended sense of time; this could have come about from the following equation: Property Z belongs to A, child B belongs to A, therefore property Z belongs to B

Joking — language + ritual bonding

Kinship Naming — language + knowledge of paternity

Law — community organization + cooperation + division of labor + ethics + games + government + property rights + ritual + status differentiation + language

Marriage — ritual + sexual display + need for knowledge of paternity (by both male and female)

Martial Arts — ritualizing body movements to make more orderly + combat

Mealtimes — ritualization of family feasting on a daily schedule + cooking

Obstetrics — medicine + childbirthing

Penal Sanctions — ethics + law + government

Personal Names — language + theory of mind (theory of self-consciousness/identity of others)

Population Policy— this could have come from our extended sense of time, leading to a more fully-developed awareness of the connection between sex and reproduction

Pregnancy Usages— ritual + pregnancy (awareness that pregnancy = immanent birth, from our extended sense of time, leading to a more fully-developed awareness of the connection between sex and reproduction)

Puberty Customs — this could have come from our extended sense of time, leading to a more fully-developed awareness of the connection between the physical development of a child, sex, and reproduction, with sex becoming associated with becoming an adult

Residence Rules — a variation of property rights

Sexual Restrictions – this could have come from our extended sense of time, leading to a more fully-developed awareness of the connection between sex and reproduction

Surgery — tool usage + medicine

Weather Control— ritual to attempt to make chaos into order, applied to weather

Weaving — extension of tool usage + fine manipulation of fingers

I have left out some of these, as I have been and/or will be dealing with them in much greater detail throughout this work. But these should give us a good idea of how combinations of instincts could have given rise to new instincts, while retaining the old instincts. The combinations I have suggested are not beyond question. Further investigation and research into these instincts should result in additions, subtractions, or recombinations for at least some of these. What I have done here is show how each of these unique human instincts could have easily developed out of the instincts of the common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. Every one of our actions, every one of our instincts, have evolutionary origins.