language pre-history, proto writing

bradshawfoundation.com 2019 Proto Writing System

bbc.com/ 1-2023 Humans and wild apes share common language – By Victoria Gill

Humans share elements of a common language with other apes, understanding many gestures that wild chimps and bonobos use to communicate. That is the conclusion of a video-based study in which volunteers translated ape gestures.It was carried out by researchers at St Andrews University. It suggests the last common ancestor we shared with chimps used similar gestures, and that these may have been a “starting point” for our language. The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology. … “So we already had a suspicion that this was a shared gesturing ability that might have been present in our last shared ancestor. “We’re quite confident now that our ancestors would have started off gesturing, and that this was co-opted into [our] language.”…

>money history, game theory, animal signals, partner choice, social evolution, morality, credit

academia.edu – gg/pdf 2019 Money is a token of cooperation: The biology of indirect exchanges – by Jose Maanmieli

Abstract: I propose an objective definition of money through a biological definition of cooperation, as
opposed to altruism. I argue that these types of sociality are confused because they are not evaluated from
a situated perspective of animal interactions. The theory of reciprocal altruism does not correctly model
the human exchange of goods and services. These constructive economic interactions require the ability to
choose partners based on individual preferences. On the other hand, altruism presupposes partnership
under a common standard of value. Therefore, the nature and evolution of money cannot be explained by
conceptualising it as a token of altruism or as a form of credit. Rather, money is a transferable signal that
enables cooperative interactions between distant or unrelated individuals. This behavioural definition
similarly proposes an understanding of morality and human society as strategies of indirect reciprocity in
the context of game theory.