A little experiment if you'll bear with me: What would you think if you came across a tribe in a jungle ...?

Question

Now to give a bit of background to the tribe, they are generally altruistic and cooperative amongst themselves but they do behave aggressively with some rape occurring and they also engage in prolonged (over several generations) campaigns of warfare with specific tribes against whom they have a grudge, such as those who split from their tribe. The battles tend to be bloody and violent but they mostly use their hands or feet except when rocks are handy to throw.

As regards hunting, the men usually chase down monkeys and shake them from the trees before beating them to death. The women generally don't accompany them because of nursing activity but in recent times they have been seen sharpening sticks and using them as stabbing spears to catch small animals hiding in hollow trees. Other tool use includes stones for nutcrackers, and sticks to catch ants or test the depth of water but not many that are very sophisticated though meta-tool use is seen.

Primitive medicine is used whereby specific plants or parts of plants such as herbs, leaves or barks of certain trees are either taken alone or mixed together, sometimes with soil to cure themselves or certain illnesses. When tested these plants and combinations are shown to have definite medicinal properties. For example, the leaves of a certain plant MUST be mixed with soil to become active medicinally. Neither alone have any effect.

Regarding rituals, the males are seen in thunder storms climbing a hill with branches and running down waving them in the air before repeating over and over again. Also, frequently when they come across waterfalls they show excitment and run back and forth and beat tree stumps etc. It is not possible to communicate with these tribe members so the motivation of these rituals is not known.

Ok so now you have an idea of this tribe, I'm going to ask a couple of questions. (Some of you probably actually know the answer to this but play along anyway.)

1) Can you hazard any guesses as to what the motivation of the ritualistic behaviour is?

2) Can you think of what culture at what time in history this tribe might belong to?

Answer 1

I honestly have no idea... I'd like you to tell me though! :)

asseenfromoutside ~ You play nice with my friend...

Answer 2

Chimpanzees

Answer 3

1.  I believe they see the waterfalls as rain fall

2.  I have no idea

Answer 4

This is a hard way to promote your cause. Since I am on your band wagon-I find ignorance and fear promotes this epidemic of fundamentalism (religious right all the way to the atheists who call people of faith delusional.)

Answer 5

Interesting. I think what this shows about ritual is that it is not particularly 'purposeful': often rituals in society have no role other than fulfilling social interaction and allowing individuals to use their bodies creatively. Whilst some rituals are obviously culturally useful or productive (giving gifts at Christmas) others may simply be done for the visceral enjoyment of it (dancing when drunk) and serve no purpose outside of themselves. To require a 'purpose' is to misunderstand ritual. There's no reason, I guess, that these ideas couldn't be applied to the other apes!

Answer 6

If they talk as much as you I'd get the next bus out of there.