To all

Thank you for your comments.

Axel Thiel's first and second

>partial reply to N.Egenter`s statement

>The problem is that unaided hand has changed but 
>little in 5 million years and that what it produces
>by itself [h]as also changed little.
>So, personally, I don't see much advantage 
>in calling hands "tools."

In contrast to this, my own focus was relational. Only if you see the 'hand as a tool' related to its factual potential for a huge task, in addition, closely related with non-durable fibrous materials, then only, the formula' *the hand was the first tool* becomes dynamite!

I think that Julia Blue is right in assuming that bananas are a 'zooism' in regard to apes. Jennie Hawcroft's answer confirms it. Maybe the cliche was also influenced by the famous experiment where apes had to put two parts of a stick together to reach bananas. Note: a good example how we check things!

Brad Coon's suggestion is very important. He writes:

>There is a fascinating article in "Great Ape Societies" 
>noting the use of selectively crushed vegetation 
>to indicate food sources, travel directions, etc. by bonobos

This in fact implies nothing less than that the bonobos must have some sort of a semantic system which helps them in spatial orientation. In my own context this is very important. Such sublime observations are usually not taken into account. Neither in culture! 'Sublime' anthropology may be a way out! Thank you. I will read it.

Paul E. Pettennude commented Brad Coon's letter with the question:

> What about the brain?  It controls the other tools.

In the whole I had the feeling that my message had not come through. Maybe I was not clear enough. The topic was not focussed simply on the hand, but on the question: if we use the concept 'the hand was the first tool' (which implies fibroconstructive techniques and artefacts), what are the implications on the structure of our present theories regarding hominid evolution? Let us discuss this more in detail in the following, with two contrasting concepts.

Conventional interpretations of 'hominid evolution'

1) Bipedalism and hand

The development of the hand is closely related to bipedalism. How did it 'become free' from locomotion? Evidently the primary phase of the hand had a strong partner: arboreal locomotion. Thus, in spite of its 'human' form, in the arboreal domain it is still dominantly integrated into locomotion. This changed with terrestrial locomotion. The arboreal developments of the great apes made them very ill-adapted on the ground on which they were increasingly forced due to climatic changes. The evolutionist would expect that they adapted 'regressively' to quadrupedic conditions. But, surprisingly, something quite different happened. Erected position of the body and bipedic locomotion were favoured. Only a strong partner could have effected this. One closely related to existential conditions. We will see later.

Conventional discussions of bipedalism turn around 2 conditional and 2 operational topics.

• Conditional:
  • climatic changes forced apes from arboreal to terrestric habitat (16-11 mio. years)
  • tall grasses in terrestric habitat led to erection of body

• Operational:
  • carrying food
  • tool use (plant foods, meat/killing, carrying weapons against predators)

2) Brain size

3) Face, teeth and jaws

Most anthropologists today tend to relate points 2) and, eventually, 3) to the development of tool-using behavior, favouring the historistic support of finds of earliest tools. However, observations of chimpanzees, gorillas and oranutans in the wild do not speak in favour of the tool-user hypothesis. Tool-using was only sporadically observed, and seems to play a rather marginal role in pongid life (ant fishing, nut cracking etc.; McGrew and others). Do we, maybe, considerably overestimate the role of the tool in hominid evolution because we can archaeologically document it? (And want ourselves to appear as progressive 'toolmakers'?)

Hominid evolution and 'fibroconstructive industries'

• Daily nestbuilding among present great apes is an undeniable fact. It is intimately interwoven with the daily existence of chimpanzees, gorillas and oranutans. It is much more important than tool-use. As a behavior common to all pongids living in considerable distances (Africa, Asia), nestbuilding must be a very old acquirement, eventually related to size and weight of body.

• The postulate of fibroconstructive industries related to hominid evolution is not new. It was maintained already in 1929 by the Yerkes in their book 'The Great Apes'. In view of primatologically observed nests, their suggestion of an evolution of constructivity clearly implies the assumption of fibroconstructive industries for hominids and their precursors.

• Nestbuilding behavior among pongids provides us with much more proto-cultural data than tool-using behavior.

• Ground-nests are made in the terrestrial domain of locomotion. According to materials (e.g. bamboo) they strongly favour bipedic posture.

• As 'buildings' or 'tectonical objects' nests can be related to human building traditions.

• As part of night camps, their structural and spatial conditions can be compared with human settlements.

• The hand acts as the main tool to 'build' an existentially important artefact, the nest.

• Nestbuilding is to a great extent learned behavior, thus can be considered as sub-human constructive tradition.

These are important arguments. They may support the working hypothesis that

• 'fibroconstructive industries' played an important role in proto-hominid and hominid evolutionary processes.

Evidently this provides new models for the interpretation of hominid evolution and early culture.

New models, new interpretations

• Erection of body posture:
  The erection of body-posture (one million before stone tools) might be closely related to terrestric constructive behavior (ground nests of great apes and their structural derivates) favoured by increasingly terrestrial locomotion among proto-hominids and early hominids., maybe also because it was a selective advantage in the new habitat now shared with terrestric predators.

• Earliest tools:
  Earliest tools were dominantly interpreted in the context of hunting, consequently reduced to 'butchering' functions. If we assume prelithic fibroconstructive industries, plausible new functions for early stone tools appear: cutting plants as 'building materials'. In this sense earliest tools could have greatly favoured the development of fibroconstructive industries. Manipulatable fibrous materials were now easily dissected from roots and disclocated. Stonetools paved the way also for increasingly integrating non-manipulatable fibrous materials (wood) into constructive processes. Note that pongid ground nests are constructed with rooted materials of the same plant(s). Dissecting plants from roots implied not only a considerably extended selection of different materials, but also transporting materials to a different site. Materials could be mixed. The sum of these new factors could be called the 'fibroconstructive revolution' triggered by stonetools.

• The evolution of the hand:
  It is true, the hand does not change considerably over millions of years. But, this is itself a serious phenomenon. There is also a surprising continuity in the relation of the hand to fibroconstructive operation from arboreal tree nests, terrestric groundnests to highly evolved fibroconstructive operations like basketry, matting or thatch. Operations of bending, twisting, weaving, knotting, binding have remained practically the same. However, striking is, that this type of operation produced maybe 99% of material culture of many traditional societies. The basic continuity of the hand as well as its specific developments like 'precision grip' or increased capacity for rotation fit well into this evolutionary scheme.

• Changes of face:
  The stereoscopic focalisation of the face too might have to do something with artefact producing processes localised stereotypically between one's own hands and at arms distance.

• Increasing size of brain:
  If we assume 'prelithic fibroconstructive industries, then, very likely, it was not the tool itself, that created increased brainsize, but rather its positive functional impacts on a much older industry which produced fibroconstructive artefacts. What were these impacts like? Groundnests of the great apes are built with 'rooted' materials. If we assume that this 'rooted' condition had essentially been preserved until the appearance of earliest tools - note that it had been considerably responsible for bipedalism - now - by means of the new tools - constructivity develops into a new, but archaeologically invisible domain of fibroconstructive forms (semantic and domestic architecture) used for spatial demarcation of temporary, later fixed settlements. This is the real experimental field of culture, which later forms the base of the 'neolithic revolution', finally of the 'luxurious monumentality' of the earliest empires. We were not interested in fibrous industries, because they did not show in the scanning method of archaeologists.

• Evolution of culture:
  Evolution of culture would now be reconstructed differently. If the hypothesis of 'fibroconstructive industries' is maintained for hominid evolution, the archaeological and paleoanthropological methods would have to be complemented by another anthropology, which uses an 'anthropological' concept of 'material culture' ('fibroconstructive' as a primary class) and works systematically with it in reconstructing hominid evolution and 'cultural' object traditions.

Conclusions

In fact, the nest as an artefact and spatio-structural proto-culture has much more data to offer than the 'tool-user'. It can open new views on processes of cultural evolution. The focus is now not so much on the isolated object as a datable fact, but, rather, a fairly objective environmental aspect of proto-cultural and cultural life: the settlement, the habitat.

Best regards,

Nold Egenter

_____________________

Important cultural sources for the early existence of constructivity and corresponding developments are e. g. Henry de Lumley's paleolithic camp 'Terra Amata' (Nice, France). It shows relatively evolved house types and settlement. Other materials are 'tectiformes' and other rockart, worldwide (Egenter: Semiotica 100-2/4 (1994) :201-66). See also the edition on stone-age settlements in 'Scientific American'.